


The White Queen.

by steeleye



Series: After The First Won. [5]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, F/F, Sci-Fi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-24
Updated: 2020-04-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 20:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 27,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23293408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/steeleye/pseuds/steeleye
Summary: Interstellar exploration, exciting, right? Wrong! Weeks of tedium travelling between stars followed by months of tedium surveying planets. But how else was a girl like Cordelia going see the galaxy for less than thirty Alliance D'lahs a day?
Series: After The First Won. [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1556119
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

>The White Queen.

By Steeleye.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own the Buffyverse or any of the crossovers used in this fic; neither do I claim authorship of any script/canon words used. I write these stories for fun not profit.

 **Crossover:** Multiple Crossovers; ideas stolen from ‘Alien’, The Thing, 'Blade Runner', '2001; a Space Odyssey', 'Dollhouse' and ‘Terminator’.

 **Spelling, Grammar and Punctuation:** Written in glorious UK-English (the original and best) which is different to US-English.

 **Timeline:** Part of the 'After The First Won' series of stories set after the events depicted in 'The Tale of the Black Freighter'.

 **Words:** Nine chapters of 2500+ words.

 **Warnings:** Yes...well not really, just the usual harsh language, blood and gore and a little light girl on girl action.

 **Summary:** Interstellar exploration, exciting, right? Wrong! Weeks of tedium travelling between stars followed by months of tedium surveying planets. But how else was a girl like Cordelia going see the galaxy for less than thirty Alliance D'lahs a day?

0=0=0=0

_Space is infinite.  
It is dark.  
Space is neutral.  
It is cold.  
Stars occupy minute areas of space.   
They are clustered a few billion here.   
A few billion there.   
As if seeking consolation in numbers.  
Space does not care._

The Black Corridor; Hawkwind.

**Brass Monkey, 3514CE.**

Looking out through the window in the outer bulkhead of the crew lounge Cordy shivered and hugged herself tightly. Although the armoured glass was four inches thick and designed to withstand almost anything short of the stresses of FTL flight; she fancied she could hear the wind howling outside as the snowflakes immolated themselves against the hard, unyielding hull of the Shooting Star. 

Turning she surveyed the wreckage that was the crew-lounge and sighed, was it really too difficult for people to take their used plates, cups and utensils and put them in the replicator? Obviously it was; she started to clear the table of dirty dishes and half eaten food and put all the remains in the replicator. Pressing the ‘reclaim’ button, she watched as everything was reduced to its component atoms before being turned into all purpose ‘gloop’ to be stored in the ‘sludge tanks’. 

Walking over to a utility locker, Cordy took out a cleaner and started to run it over the lounge and its furnishings. As she worked she went over her plans for what she was going to do once this voyage was over, it helped keep her mind off the work she had to do. This was to be her last voyage with Weyland-Yutani's Stellar Exploration Division, she’d been with the company for nearly six years now and this time, when she got home to Earth, she’d be resigning.

While she’d been with the company, Cordy had been extremely lucky; she’d received several fat bonuses for being on voyages that had resulted in the discovery of valuable resources or habitable planets. Having saved almost all the money from these bonuses and the larger part of her pay, she’d be pretty wealthy when she left the company. Plus there weren’t many twenty-six year old women, outside of the military, who could say they’d spent more than five years exploring beyond the limits of known space.

Alright, so she was _just_ the ship’s steward, but what else was an ex-cheerleader with an average education, no degree, no money and an urge to see at least some of the galaxy before she settled down to do? The company had trained her, and it wasn’t all just about clearing up after the flight crew and exploration crew; the things she’d learnt over the years would stand her in good stead when she decided to settle down.

Switching off the cleaner Cordy looked around at the lounge and smiled; not a trace of dirt or dust remained. In fact the lounge was probably cleaner than the sickbay just at that moment. Of course that would last until precisely thirty seconds after the first member of the exploration crew got back, then she’d be doing it all over again after lunch, and again after dinner and then…

Sighing heavily Cordy shook her head; remember, she told herself, this was her last cruise. Any mess she cleaned up after this would be her own. Not that she intended to do _any_ cleaning, she was going to marry someone rich and live a life of luxury. Smiling to herself she put away the cleaner before walking over to the coffee machine and pouring herself a mug of the rich, aromatic brew. Captain Scott, the Shooting Star’s commanding officer, always ensured that they had a supply of real coffee on hand. Turning back to the window she looked outside again; breathing in the fresh coffee aroma she gazed out at the frozen wilderness that surrounded the ship.

The storm that had hit last night had abated and Cordy could just make out the orange suits of two of the exploration crew drilling down into the snow taking ice core samples or some such. To be honest, she wasn’t really that interested; she’d been interested enough when she’d first started out, but that was over five years ago. Now she’d seen most of everything and ice cores just didn’t get her as excited as they obviously did some other people. Sipping her coffee she went back to daydreaming; the first thing she was going to do when she got back to Earth, was to go on a long vacation somewhere warm. Somewhere with blue skies, warm seas, clean sandy beaches and lots of rich women looking for attractive younger wives. It didn’t bother her that this propective rich, older woman would probably want to start a family. Just lately Cordy had been thinking that babies were cute and as childbirth was more or less painless these days, she didn’t really mind the idea f becoming a mother. Surfacing from her reverie Cordy looked into her mug to find it empty, she must have been standing here for ages.

“What’s the time please, Mother?” Cordy always said ‘please’ and ‘thank-you’ when she talked to the ship’s computer; it had feelings too, they were programmed into its AI.

“Zero eight forty-five, Cordy,” the computer replied.

“Thank-you Mother,” she turned towards the door and sighed again, “oh-well better be getting on.” 

Cordy still had the bridge and the Captain’s quarters to clean before she could take her mid-morning break. As she worked she hummed a happy tune to herself and dreamed of sandy beaches, warm, blue oceans and a wife with a bank account bigger than some world's gross planetary product...and babies.

0=0=0=0

It was nearly ten o’clock by the time she got back to her cabin; she preferred taking her breaks alone rather than with the rest of the crew; she even preferred to eat there by herself. This wasn’t her usual ship; her own ‘Falling Star’ was in dock for a refit. The Shooting Star’s steward had gone sick and they’d needed a replacement at short notice so she’d volunteered and the extra pay would come in handy.

Looking around the bare little cabin she shook her head tiredly, she’d not been aboard long enough to make the place her own yet, and she doubted that she ever would. Not now, not with half the cruise already gone. Sitting down on the little stool in front of her dressing table she looked at herself in the mirror. She liked what she saw, how could any woman resist her? When the time came for her to settle down she'd have no problem finding a wife to keep her in the style that she truly deserved.

0=0=0=0

“Buzzzzz!” Went the intercom on the wall by her door.

“Yes what is it?” Cordy called out.

“Hi Cordy,” it was Jo Kotta the chief engineer from down in the engine room “the dog’s crapped in the main corridor again, you better come clean it up.”

“Goddess damn it,” Cordy muttered under her breath as she swung her legs off the bed, “I’ll be there in five okay?”

“Yeah you better be,” sniggered Kotta, “Captain’s on her rounds.”

“Okay,” Cordy broke the connection as she got to her feet, “Freakin’ dog,” she muttered angrily as she headed for the door, “always crapping all over the place!”

Suddenly and not for the first time in her life, Cordy simply _knew_ she'd been born to do better things than clean up the crap left by mangy dogs. However, almost as soon as the thought had arrived in her head it had vanished.

0=0=0=0

Most ships had a pet, usually something furry and cute, the Falling Star had a cat called ‘Biggles’ a big, black and white, laid-back Tom who was everybody’s friend, particularly if you tickled his tummy. Some ships had a couple of Ferrets who’d scamper about the ship ambushing each other and keeping everyone amused with their antics. The Shooting Star had Nero, a large stupid Golden Retriever type dog who hated Cordy.

Cordy had no idea why the dog so disliked her; it would bark and snarl at her whenever she walked into the same compartment, and she was sure it pee-ed and crapped all over the ship just to piss her off and get her into trouble. It’d got to the point were they couldn’t be in the same compartment together, so by a sort of mutual agreement they actively avoided each other as far as possible.

Collecting a ‘mobile hazardous waste disposal unit' from her storeroom, Cordy made her way aft towards the engine room. As she walked she wondered if anyone would be too upset if Nero got accidentally reduced to his component atoms by the disposal unit. Shaking her head sadly, Cordy decided that they probably would, plus the damn dog would likely as not find a way of getting at her from beyond the sludge tank.

0=0=0=0

Luckily the mess Nero had left wasn’t quite as bad as it could’ve been; maybe the animal was getting soft? Or maybe it was just getting sneakier; clearing up had meant Cordy’d had to go down to one of the corridors just outside the engine room where she was bound to bump into Jo Kotta. Kotta was alright, she guessed, she was friendlier than most of the crew, her main problem was that she thought she was The Lady's gift to women, she wouldn't take 'no' for an answer. Cordy knew from bitter experience that there was some one like Kotta on every ship.

Maybe if Kotta lost twenty pounds or so and took a daily shower, Cordy could bear to be in the same compartment with her for more than thirty seconds. As it was she didn’t, and Cordy couldn’t, so she kept away from engineering as much as possible. This was a pity because Irene Skeritt, the other engineer was a nice, older woman who she could talk to and indulge in some harmless flirting.

0=0=0=0

Nero padded along the corridor near engineering; he stopped at the junction and sniffed the air. He could smell ‘her’; he didn’t know why the human female made him so uneasy, after all he was just a dog and not a very bright one. But, whenever he caught her scent it made him feel very-very angry. Nero’s hackles rose as Cordy’s scent washed over him, he started to trot towards her, she was in his territory and he couldn’t let her pass unchallenged. Turning the corner into engineering he saw her and started to bark uncontrollably.

0=0=0=0

“Damn!” Cordy cried as she turned to look at the dog, “I better go before the mutt goes completely insane.”

Turning away from Kotta, who’d been trying to convince her that going to bed with her would be the most fantastic experience Cordy could have this voyage; she made her excuses and headed for the ladder that led up to the next deck. Luckily the hound couldn’t climb ladders, so she’d be able to get away from it and its continual barking. As she turned her back on the dog it saw its chance and charged after her baring his teeth and growling deep in his throat. Turning Cordy saw the dog leap through the air towards her as if in slow motion. Her arm came up automatically and knocked the dog out of the air, he hit the bulkhead with a resounding *CLUNK!* before falling to the floor and running off yelping with his tail between his legs.

“Feck-me girl!” Kotta gazed after the retreating dog her face a mixture of amazement and amusement, “How’d you do that? I’ve never seen anyone react so fast.”

“Lucky I guess?” Cordy shrugged her shoulders she tried to laugh off what had just happened; she didn’t want Weyland-Yutani's Bio-weapons division snooping ‘round her.

Taking a firm hold on her disposal unit, Cordy started to climb up the ladder to ‘C’ deck, maybe the dog would stay away from her now.

0=0=0=0

Resisting the urge to stretch and flap his wings, S'Emaj continued to watch the humans as they worked around their starship. From his position on the ridge above where the human ship had landed he could see everything the humans were doing. He didn't know why the humans had landed where they had or what they were doing. He was only grateful that they had landed at this location, it was only a few miles from his own disabled ship. The pilot and the engineer, the only surviving members of the ship's crew, had told him that the ship would never fly again and short of some sort of miracle they would all freeze to death on this gods-forsaken ball of ice.

As S'Emaj was the highest ranked surviving male and it was his responsibility to make sure that as many of the Race survived as possible. He'd been about to order an evacuation to the thin temperate zone at the planet's equator when the human ship had landed. Quickly changing his plans S'Emaj had ordered that plans be made to capture the human ship and fly it home. Not only would capturing the human starship provide him with a means to get his fellow males and most of their female crew and soldiers home. It would also mean promotion for him. No one of the Race had ever captured a human starship intact before and the rewards for anyone who did would be beyond even his wildest dreams.

Watching the human's through his field glasses, S'Emaj suppressed a shiver of disgust, he'd fought the humans for nearly two years now and they revolted him. From the strange long filaments that sprouted from their heads to the weird lumps on their chests everything about humans made him want to wipe them from the face of the galaxy. What was worse, as far as S'Emaj was concerned at least, was the knowledge that as far as anyone knew there were no human males, all humans were females and that just felt wrong to him; for a start how did they breed? Who gave them orders and made sure that any work was done?

However, today S'Emaj couldn't see the 'hair' sprouting from the human's heads or their grotesque chest bumps as the five humans he could see where wearing bright orange survival suits against the freezing temperatures of the planet. The suits were a little like the vac-suits that both the Race and the humans wore, but these suits were of a lighter construction and didn't appear to restrict the human's movement in any way, unlike his own suit which prevented him from stretching his wings. Not that he could fly on this accursed planet, the gravity was too high and the atmosphere too thin to let him do more than glide from off the top of a cliff, not that he'd want to because he'd surely freeze to death if he did.

Crawling back from the crest, S'Emaj placed his binoculars back into the pouch on his combat harness and looked at the six infantry females he'd brought with him. Although the humans didn't appear to have any of their armoured warriors with them, he would remain cautious. Although he hadn't seen any of the 'hard skin' warriors that didn't mean that there weren't any inside the ship or that the humans he'd seen today didn't have the armoured suits and weapons close by. He'd fought the humans before and their armoured warriors while not invulnerable were hard to kill, it would be foolish to risk an attack before he knew what the human's full military capability was.

So far his observation teams had never recorded more than six humans outside the ship at any one time. Also, as the humans always wore their suits he could never be sure if he was seeing the same six humans or different humans. The size of the ship would suggest a crew of twenty or thirty humans. The humans were vicious fighters, this added to their use of armoured suits made attacking them extremely dangerous. What he really needed was a spy inside the human ship. With the information that a spy could give him he could make his plans and attack and capture the human craft.

Shaking his head, the prospect of capturing the human ship was as far away now as it had been before he'd started this patrol, he signalled to his escort to move out. Having backed away from the ridge-line the infantry females stood up and formed a protective screen around their male. Casting a last glance over his shoulder, S'Emaj shrugged as best he could under his suit before starting the long walk back to his own ship through the snow.

0=0=0=0


	2. Chapter 2

**Later the same day.**

Standing to one side of the lounge Cordy waited for the exploration crew to finish-up so she could clear the table and clean up the mess they’d left; she could quite understand why the flight crew ate in the gym…these people were animals. On her own ship everyone ate together like a big noisy family, but here, the flight crew kept very much to themselves as did the exploration crew and both groups treated Cordy as if she wasn’t there. Not that Cordy really minded, because, quite honestly, she wished that the flight and exploration teams weren't there either.

The climatologist Terri Crowther was spouting her latest theory about the planet.

“…looks like this used to be the garden spot of the planet,” there were grunts of agreement from several of the scientists around the table, “about a thousand years ago the ice sheets came down from the north and…” 

Cordy tuned the climatologist’s voice out as she turned to see the door to the compartment slide open. Captain Scott walked slowly into the lounge, as usual she looked tired and worn down, she wore a perpetual frown on her care worn face that added a good ten years to her actual age of forty-five. Cordy smiled pleasantly at the captain who nodded a greeting to her; she stood next to Cordy as she called for everyone’s attention. Slowly the exploration crew stopped talking and turned to look at the captain.

“Alright people,” Captain Scot began wearily, “I’ve got some news for you.”

This caught everyone’s attention and they all waited eagerly to hear what the Captain had to say.

“As I’m sure you remember,” (but I’m going to repeat it anyway) Cordy filled in the Captain’s unspoken words in her mind, “the only reason we landed here was because one of the valves controlling the flow of energy to the sub-light drives had failed.” 

The captain ran a trembling hand over her face, she looked exhausted to Cordy’s eyes.

“Well, I’m sorry to say that it looks like we’re going to have to fabricate several new parts,” the Captain paused to judge the mood of the room, it wasn’t good, “we’ll be here for another three or four days at least…sorry.”

There were groans and muttered comments about the flight crew’s inefficiency, and how were people supposed to earn their bonuses if they were stuck on this ball of ice? The only person who didn’t sound upset were Jerri Shusett the chief geologist, she looked positively happy.

“Great!” she said loudly and instantly became the centre of attention for everyone in the room, she looked in surprise at all the sullen faces that were suddenly turned towards her, “I don’t know what you’re so upset about…geologically speaking this place is really interesting, look only…”

Shusett’s voice faded into the background chatter of the exploration crew complaining about how unlucky they all were. The captain, forgotten now by everyone but Cordy shook her head and turned towards the door; remembering something she turned back to look at Cordelia.

“Miz Chase,” the captain gave Cordy a tight lipped smile, “Doc Blake wondered if you could make it to sickbay this afternoon…something about a physical…” her voice trailed off and the captain turned to continue her way out the compartment not even waiting for Cordy to reply.

“Pigs,” Cordy muttered under her breath, referring both to the table manners of the exploration crew and everyone’s inability to treat her as something more than an automaton. 

As she turned to collect the cleaner from the utility closet, Cordy got a brief flash of a memory, hadn't she once had a maid or someone to do all this sort of stuff for her? However, once again the memory was gone before she could really examine it. Instead she sighed heavily as she began to clear up the lounge as the exploration crew walked out hardly giving her a second look.

0=0=0=0

After clearing up the crew lounge for the second time that day Cordy presented herself at the sickbay.

“Hi?” she called uncertainly as the door swished closed behind her; at first glance the sickbay looked empty, but then she noticed movement from the direction of the little office at the back of the bay.

“Cordy,” Doctor Beverly Blake appeared from out of the office and smiled at her.

The doctor was one of the few people aboard the Shooting Star that Cordy actually liked. The MO was a tall, dark brown woman about ten years older than herself; she had a quick smile and sparkling eyes and always looked as if she was enjoying some private joke about the rest of the crew and the universe in general.

“You wanted to see me?” Cordy walked further into the sickbay, although she liked the doctor, sickbays made her feel ill at ease.

“Nothing to worry about sweetie,” smiled Beverly as she crossed the room and led Cordy to a Bio-bed, “just your six monthly physical…now jump up here,” she patted the bed, “and it’ll be all over in about ten minutes.”

Obediently Cordy jumped up onto the bed and lay down.

0=0=0=0

Outside Nero barked happily as he ran across the snowfield, he jumped with joy at being let out of the ship. The sky had turned a bright blue after the storm of the morning and the sun shone down with blinding clarity on the pristine snow making the air temperature only a couple of degrees below freezing. Nero ran in great circles as he hunted imaginary prey. Nose down he followed the scent trails of the exploration crew as his little doggy mind imagined he was the leader of the pack on a hunting expedition.

Looking up Nero smelt an unfamiliar scent coming from a jumble of boulders about seventy-five yards away, tail wagging he raced over to investigate. Sniffing between the boulders, Nero felt sure something had been there recently. His nose told him so, something he’d never smelt before, he started to paw at the snow. As he lifted his head to bark a warning the snow came alive and erupted around him, dragging him down into the cold darkness where it had been hidden between the boulders. Nero whined in fear as the sticky white stuff crawled across his fur to engulf his body and he struggled frantically to escape. Eventually the white ooze covered the dog from head to foot and Nero looked just like another lump in the snow.

0=0=0=0

“Hello, Cordy,” Doc Blake smiled down at her as Cordy lay on the bio-bed. “How are you feeling?”   
“Did I fall asleep?” Cordy sat up and looked around the sickbay a bemused smile on her face. 

“For a little while,” the doctor reached out and helped Cordy down off the bed. 

“Can I go now?” Cordy looked at the doctor, she felt like she’d missed something somewhere.

“If you like, we’re all finished here,” reassured the doctor. “You fell asleep the instant you lay down.” There was a little concern in the doctor’s voice, “Are you having problems sleeping? Everything alright?”

“Yeah sure,” Cordy always slept well; she had no concerns other than wishing she was back on her own ship.

“Hmm,” the doctor looked at her closely in that annoying way doctors do, “I’m sure its nothing…you don’t like hospitals and such do you?”

“No,” Cordy shook her head and decided not to say anything more in case the doctor wanted to keep her in for more ‘tests’; instead she shook her head and smiled, “I’m fine,” she began to head for the door.

“Well, if you do start feeling ill don’t wait to be asked,” the doctor called after her, “come see me anytime,” she laughed and gestured to the empty sickbay, “it’s not as if I’m busy…”

0=0=0=0

“Can you replicate it?” S'Emaj asked the engineer; it seemed to him that the gods had answered his prayers, he'd wanted a spy in the human ship and now it looked like he had one, if the engineer could copy the creature.

“Hmmm,” Engineer R'Etep stroked his chin with long fingers and rustled his wings as he looked down at the creature encased in white, “its a human 'dog' its a little like our own liryts, you know?”

“I know what it is,” S'Emaj replied testily, “what I want to know is can you copy it so I can use it as a spy and see what's inside that damn human ship!”

“Of-of course,” the engineer smiled at the army male's tone, S'Emaj was so easily antagonised these days, it was probably the cold, “I can have a copy made in less than an hour, I'll have to program it with a liryt's behaviour patterns, but from what I've read they're similar enough to one of these dog creatures behaviour patterns not to cause the humans to become suspicious, at least not for a while.”

“I'll need to see what this creature can see while its in the human ship,” S'Emaj explained.

“Hmm,” Engineer R'Etep pulled back the white stuff covering the 'dog' to get a closer look at the creature, “looks like there's plenty of room to fit a transmitter powerful enough to send its pictures through the hull of a starship, I expect you'll want sound as well?”

“It would be helpful,” S'Emaj flexed his wings in agreement.

“Shouldn't be a problem,” R'Etep flexed his own wings, “I'll get my techs on it immediately.”

“Good,” S'Emaj smiled, things were looking up, “but hurry we need to get this creature to the humans as soon as possible.”

Walking away from the engineers little realm, S'Emaj smiled once again and felt justified at the time it had taken his infantry females to plant the capture mines around the human ship. What the tactical computer had insisted was a long shot had proved its worth. Now, assuming the engineer could copy the 'dog' and make the required alterations he'd soon be watching those disgusting human monsters as they went about their business inside their ship. Soon he'd know if he had to face any of those armoured humans, that piece of information alone would be worth all the effort of planting the mines.

0=0=0=0

“Nero!” Patricia Rawlins the rather underemployed archaeologist called for the dog as she stood on the ramp leading up into the ship’s cargo bay.

Night was falling and the temperature was plummeting, the sky was still clear and a strong wind was blowing in from the north-west. Within an hour or so you wouldn’t survive more than a couple of hours outside even wearing a survival suit. As the dog only had its fur to protect it the chances were it would die in minutes rather than hours. As she scanned the snow field a memory came to Pat's mind. It was a story told to gullible new spacefarers by old hands late at night. It was a story about a mistake made in a signal sent to Exploration Command. Something about the ship's dog exploding and all the trouble and paperwork caused by this simple error.

“NERO!” Rawlins yelled again, all the time wondering at how much paperwork would be involved if the stupid creature had got itself killed, “Where are you? Bloody stupid animal.”

For a moment Rawlins worried that some native creature might have killed and eaten the animal, she shook her head and smiled at her foolishness. In the six days that they’d been stranded here they’d seen no evidence to suggest any living thing bigger than the white furred rat-like creatures that burrowed under the snow existed in this frozen hell. There might be animals living in the narrow temperate zone around the equator but not up here. If they’d had to make a forced landing why couldn’t they have done it further south?

“NERO!” she called again, and then added to herself, “Stupid dog must _want_ to freeze.”

Rawlins was just about to go into the cargo bay and close the doors, when she heard a bark from out on the snow field. Searching the sterile whiteness through her night-vision goggles she saw Nero bounding across the snowfield towards the ship.

“Come on!” Pat called again as the dog started to scramble up the ramp, “Trying to get us all frozen to death, eh?” 

The dog jumped up at her and tried to lick her face; Rawlins fought him off playfully and led the way into the interior of the ship, hitting the door controls as she passed.

“Alright! Alright!” the dog certainly appeared happy to see her; maybe he had got lost and was glad to be back on familiar territory.

Leading the way deeper into the ship, Rawlins opened the hatch to go down the corridor that led to her quarters. Turning she saw the dog staring at the slowly closing cargo bay door. The door shut with a reassuring ‘clunk’ and Nero shook himself and looked about the hold before trotting off after Rawlins.

0=0=0=0

Her duties finished for the day Cordy went back to her cabin, locked the door and disabled her intercom; now no one could disturb her unless it was a genuine ship-wide emergency. After undressing she showered and laid out her uniform for the next day before putting her soiled one in the replicator unit in her cabin wall. After brushing out her hair she stared at herself in the mirror for a moment. Perhaps there _was_ something wrong with her, okay she’d dozed off a few times in class at school, but that was usually because she’d been out all night at the Bronze or she'd been working hard at cheerleader practice. However, she couldn’t remember ever just dropping instantly asleep like that before, perhaps she should go and see Beverly and let her do her tests. Getting into her bed, Cordy told the lights to switch themselves off, after beating her pillows into submission she snuggled down under her covers, closed her eyes and slowly drifted off to sleep.

As she slept Cordy dreamed, she dreamed that she was back at high school with her old girlfriends. Smiling in her sleep she remembered going to class and not paying very much attention to what the teacher said; she remembered gossiping with her friends as they walked around the local mall choosing outfits for some prom being held at school. She also remembered something that made her stop smiling and made her whimper in her sleep, she remembered boys; she remembered them touching her breasts and between her legs and kissing her on the lips, she even remembered them talking to her, it was a really frightening nightmare that she couldn't wake up from.

0=0=0=0

Waking up several hours later, Cordy sat up and swung her legs out of bed. Sitting on the edge of her bed she dry scrubbed her face and frowned. The dream was coming back to her in vivid clarity; it had all seemed so normal until she'd started dreaming about the boys. It was a foolish dream, 'boys' didn't go to school they were too stupid and dangerous to be allowed to mix with girls. Anyway, weren't all males safely locked up in fertility clinics nowadays? But it was just a dream, she told herself as she stood up and headed for her fresher, nothing to worry about. It was just her subconscious playing tricks on her…but maybe she should go see Doctor Beverly again and see about those tests.

0=0=0=0


	3. Chapter 3

**The Next Day.**

Crawling out of bed Patricia Rawlins yawned and stretched.

“What’s the weather like today Mother?” she headed towards the fresher in the corner of her cabin to take a shower.

“The temperature is minus thirty degrees centigrade, there is a strong wind from the north with gusts of up to sixty miles an hour, humidity is…”

“Stop,” Pat rested her head against the fresher's door, “its cold then?”

“Correct,” was that a hint of amusement in Mother’s voice?

“Okay,” Patricia sighed and stepped into the shower, “you could've just said, you know?”

0=0=0=0

Half an hour later Patricia walked into the crew lounge and looked around, she found herself alone with that creepy steward girl who never said anything. Not bothering to greet her, Pat walked over to the replicator and ordered her breakfast. While she waited for the replicator to stop whirring and chuntering to itself as it prepared her food, she glanced at Cordy again as she poured himself a mug of coffee. It occurred to her that she’d never seen the young woman eat or drink anything. Raising the mug to her lips she sipped the strong, hot, black brew. As far as she could remember, Pat had never seen her even take a mug of coffee or anything, she sighed as her breakfast appeared in the replicator. Maybe she always ate with the flight crew. The replicator dinged and Pat took her breakfast and sat down to eat as she contemplated yet another day wasted out in the snow. She wondered if she could persuade the captain to let her take one of the ship’s shuttles down to the temperate zone. Anything had to be better than sitting out on the snow freezing her butt off.

0=0=0=0

Watching the archaeologist, Cordy had some uncharitable thoughts about the woman; chief amongst them was that she was an ‘ignorant bitch’ for ignoring her like that; she could at least have said ‘good morning’. Seeing that she wasn’t needed in the lounge for a while, she headed forward towards the bridge. The captain was fairly tidy but she usually found a couple of coffee mugs hidden away amongst the control panels, it was almost as if the crew was hiding them deliberately to catch her out. Laughing at herself for these unwarranted feelings of paranoia she made her way along the corridor; Cordy froze as she saw Nero heading towards her.

“Crap!” she cursed quietly.

The corridor was too narrow for her to pass without touching the animal; and she wasn’t going to back up for the mangy mutt. This could only end in a lot of barking and growling and possibly the sudden death of Nero the dog.

“Screw you dog,” Cordy pulled back her shoulders and continued walking, she wasn’t going to be intimidated by the flee bitten cur. 

To Cordy’s complete surprise the dog trotted by her without even seeming to notice her presence. Stopping she watched the animal disappear into the lounge. Shaking her head in confusion Cordy made her way on up to the bridge. Damn sneaky dog, she thought, trying to lull me into a false sense of security, eh? No doubt the creature would turn around and try to bite her on the butt at some point.

0=0=0=0

Looking down Pat noticed Nero sitting quietly next to her chair.

“Hey boy,” she smiled and picked up a piece of bacon from her plate and dropped it on the floor in front of the dog, “you want your breakfast too?”

The dog ignored the reprocessed protein which was masquerading as bacon.

“Can’t say I blame you,” Pat confessed shaking her head sadly, “alright, let’s get you your breakfast.”

Getting up Pat headed out of the lounge followed by Nero who slowly wagged his tail as he followed the human along the corridor. They arrived at the little store room where Nero had his bed and where his dog food was stored. It'd always seemed odd to Pat that while the humans had to eat the less than appetising offerings from the replicators. The dog got to eat proper dog food…made from real, named animals and things. Opening a packet she emptied it into Nero’s bowl and then put it in front of the dog. Nero looked at the bowl before lying down next to it; he put his head on his fore paws and whined quietly. Pat knelt down next to the animal and ruffled the fur around its neck.

“Off your food eh?” she asked, the dog did seem a little hot maybe he was ill, “Doctor Blake?”

“Yes?” the doctor replied her voice coming from the intercom on the wall of the store room.

“It’s Pat Rawlins here,” Pat stood up and turned towards the intercom unit, “could you have a look at Nero please. He’s off his food and he seems a bit hot.”

“What?” the doctor’s voice made Pat wince, she sounded just a little pissed off, “You woke me up to examine the dog?”

“Yeah please,” Pat looked down into Nero’s big brown eyes as they looked up at her, “if you can.”

“I’m a doctor not a vet,” there was another short pause while the doctor thought about the request, “alright, I’ll find him and run a sensor probe over him later today, okay?”

“Thanks doc,” Pat looked down at the dog, “see here, the doc’s gonna have a look at you later,” once more she patted the animals head, “you be on your best behaviour, okay?”

Climbing into his basket Nero watched as Pat left the storeroom. Several miles away Storm Group Leader S'Emaj, Engineer R'Etep and pilot First Class T'Rebor watched the screen and saw what the 'dog' saw.

“Disgusting,” S'Emaj muttered darkly.

0=0=0=0

Sure enough Cordy found three coffee mugs scattered about the ‘bridge’ not that the bare little room warranted such a grand sounding name. It was really nothing more than an empty room with a couple of pilot’s chairs and some holographic emitter units, most of which were switched off because no one needed the controls at the moment. On her last refit the Shooting Star had been given state of the art holographic controls, they saved weight and space.

Glancing around the compartment she decided that the floor could do with a good clean and there were some finger marks on the bulkhead by the hatch; she made a mental note to come back later. Collecting up the mugs she climbed through the hatch and headed back towards the crew lounge. As she walked along the narrow corridor someone touched her arm from behind, Cordy turned and screamed dropping the mugs sending pottery shards and cold coffee dregs in all directions.

“Be careful,” a short blonde girl who Cordy didn't recognise whispered, “something’s coming.”

0=0=0=0

“Mother,” Cordy tried to control the quaver in her voice the girl in the corridor had vanished after delivering her warning leaving Cordy trembling and confused, “please check the crew manifest for any additional crew or malfunctions in the ship's holographic emitters.”

“Checking,” Mother replied, in a neutral voice.

Cordy hadn’t stopped shaking since she had seen and heard the girl in the corridor outside the bridge. After dropping the coffee cups she had hurriedly cleared up the mess and had almost run back to her quarters. The first thing she’d thought of was that the ship's holographic emitters were malfunctioning some how.

“There are no malfunctions in the ship's holographic emitters and no additional crew members like the woman you described,” Mother almost sounded concerned.

“Are you sure?” she asked, if there were no malfunctions with the ship's systems and no additional crew that could only mean one thing.

“Yes, Cordy I am sure,” this time Mother’s voice sounded puzzled, “I checked most thoroughly, do you wish me to check again?”

“No, no thank-you,” Cordy looked at herself in her mirror, “I must be going insane…”

“I am sorry I am not qualified to make a judgement on that statement,” Mother’s voice had gone back to its normal flat tone. “May I suggest that you contact Doctor Blake if you have any concerns for your sanity.”

‘Concerns for your sanity’? Cordy’s laugh had a brittle edge to it, yes, seeing someone that didn't exist as clearly as she could see a real person would probably count as having concerns.

“Thank-you, Mother,” Cordy shook her head trying to clear it of her confused thoughts, “Doctor Blake,” Cordy absently touched the interface with her intercom, “Doctor Blake, its Cordy can I come to see you? Its sorta urgent.”

The silence stretched as Cordy waited for a reply.

“Mother,” standing up Cordy headed for the door, “what’s the location of Doctor Blake?”

“Doctor Blake is in the sickbay,” Mother came back with the reply almost immediately.

“Thank-you,”Cordy left her cabin and walked briskly along the corridor heading for the sickbay.

0=0=0=0

As she walked, Cordy tried to puzzle out how she was going to tell the doctor that she was seeing things…people even. Before she'd come up with a good answer she arrived at the door to sickbay. Taking her courage in both hands she ordered the door to open. It remained shut; she tried again this time pressing her thumb against the lock pad at the side of the door; that would get her through most doors on the ship. Still the door remained shut.

“Mother,” Cordy pressed the button to activate the intercom next to the sickbay's door, “what’s the location of Doctor Blake?” she spoke the words carefully, sometimes Mother misheard things.

“Doctor Blake is in the sickbay,” Mother sounded as if it was speaking carefully as well, so she couldn’t be misunderstood.

“Are you absolutely sure?”Cordy was starting to get worried.

“Oh look Cordy,” Mother was starting to sound a little like her real mother when she got annoyed, “if you’re going to question everything I say we’re not going to get anywhere!”

Once again Cordy tried to get the sickbay door to open, the door however remained firmly shut.

“Miz Stirling,” Cordy decided it was time to call the Third Officer, Veronica Stirling, who had responsibility for security matters.

“What’s wrong Cordy?” the woman’s voice came from the intercom almost immediately.

0=0=0=0

It only took Stirling a couple of minutes to join Cordy outside sickbay; she questioned Mother about the doctor’s where abouts before ordering the door to open. The computer gave her the same answers as it had given Cordy, and the door remained closed. Looking at Cordy as if the doctor’s sudden refusal to open the door was her fault, Stirling placed a security override card over the door pad and stood back as the door slid open.

“Doc?” Stirling walked into the room followed cautiously by Cordy, there was no reply to Stirling’s call.

“Mother,” Stirling pursed her lips as she spoke, “Doctor Blake is not immediately visible; give an exact location for Doctor Blake.”

Pausing as if it was thinking Mother finally announced that, “The doctor is in the utility locker two point five yards forward of your present position.”

Stirling strode over to the locker and pulled open the door and looked inside.

“AAGH!” Stirling screamed as the doctor's body fell out of the locker and landed on top of her knocking her to the deck.

Cordy ran over to Stirling to pull the dead doctor off the security chief. Easily lifting the doctor’s dead weight, she placed the body on a section of clear deck before turning to help Stirling to her feet again.

“W-what the feck!” Stirling cried as she stared first at Cordy and then at the doctor's dead body.

“She'd dead!” Cordy gasped, it seemed like a stupid thing to say, but someone had to say it.

“You're sure?” Stirling knelt down next to the doctor's body.

“What do you think?” Cordy asked as she felt her heart pounding away in her chest.

“I think she's dead,” Stirling agreed.

“You mean she died and stuffed herself in the closet?” Cordy asked, “Or she stuffed herself in the closet and then died?”

“I see what you mean,” Stirling agreed as she headed towards the nearest intercom unit, “we better call the Captain.”

0=0=0=0

After the discovery of the doctor's body, the exploration crew had been called in from outside and a thorough search of the ship was conducted. The only thing out of the ordinary was that Nero was also missing. Ms Stirling had interviewed everybody and the Captain had carried out ship wide sensor sweeps. No sign of either the doctor's killer or the dog had been found. When Cordy mentioned that she'd seen someone in the corridor, everyone agreed that they must have a stowaway aboard who'd killed the doctor. The ship was searched once more but the doctor's killer remained undetected.

0=0=0=0

“Storm Leader S'Emaj,” Pilot T'Rebor began, “do you really think it was wise to kill the human healer so soon?”

“Why not,” S'Emaj shrugged his wings, “when we start our attack there will be no one to treat their wounded who will now die. Also now they are looking for the healer's killer they won't be watching for us.”

“Ah, yes I see now,” T'Rebor rustled his wings in agreement, “very clever, I can see why you're the Storm Leader and not me and of course they won't suspect the dog!”

0=0=0=0

Waking up the next morning Cordy found herself bathed in perspiration, she slid from between her sodden sheets and sat on the edge of her bed. For a moment she rested her head in her hands and tried to work out if she had a fever or whether it was just hot in her cabin. Holding her hand out in front of her she studied it closely and found it as steady as a rock, she checked her pulse; as far as she could tell it was normal.

“Mother,” Cordy climbed to her feet and headed towards her shower, “why is it so hot in here?”

“There has been a ship wide malfunction in life support,” intoned the computer, “resulting in a ten degree increase in temperature. Engineers Kotta and Skeritt are working to rectify the problem.”

“Thank-you Mother,” Cordy stepped into the shower and turned on the water, “how long ‘til things are back to normal?”

“Unknown.” Mother replied shortly.

For a moment Cordy paused as she washed the stale sweat from her body; that had been the second time she’d thought she’d heard Mother sound emotional, but at least she wasn’t sounding like her mother any more. Shrugging, Cordy went back to completing her shower before dressing and heading for the crew lounge.

0=0=0=0

Crawling along the service duct, Jo Kotta, the Shooting Star’s First Engineer, clambered down into the corridor just outside main engineering control. After dusting off her hands and wiping the sweat from her forehead Kotta looked up at the Captain who stood impatiently awaiting her report.

“You’re not going to like this Captain,” Kotta shook her head and held a small electronic part out to the officer, “looks like sabotage.”

Taking the part from the engineer, Captain Scott turned it over in her hands; she looked at Kotta and raised an eyebrow waiting for her to explain.

“See here Skipper’,” Kotta moved so she could stand beside the captain and point at the small part, “this node here,” she pointed with a dirty, blunt finger, “that’s been added…the part came from our own stores. With that fitted it wouldn’t matter how we set the controls that would override them.”

Studying the part for a few more moments Scott gave the engineer a worried look.

“You sure this isn’t some screw-up from the last time we were in space-dock?”

“Sure,” Kotta rested her hands on her hips as she waited for the captain to tell her to do something.

“Alright,” Scott looked at the engineer, “replace the part, I’ll look into this sabotage claim of yours.”

Watching as the captain stalked off down the corridor, Kotta shook her head sadly as she wiped her hands on a rag. The captain like the ship she commanded should have been retried years ago, but the company had its profit margins to think about so they’d both had to soldier on for a few more years. If that node had remained undetected it would have continued to raise the temperature in the ship until they would have had to abandon the ship or shut down the reactors, either way they'd all have ended up either baking or freezing to death.

0=0=0=0


	4. Chapter 4

**Everything seems to happen at breakfast time.**

Sitting down in her usual chair Pat Rawlins placed the glass of orange-juice-like liquid on the table in front of her and watched the condensation run down the sides of the glass. If they didn’t fix the temperature pretty soon they were going to have some problems. Going from a boiling hot ship out into the sub-zero cold of the planet even when wearing a survival suit couldn’t be good for anyone.

“Hi Ron,” Rawlins looked up as Ronnie Goldsmith, the junior of the two Geologists, sat down opposite her.

The geologist didn’t reply, in fact she didn’t do anything she just sat there. Rawlins shrugged her shoulders; maybe she was too distracted to talk, thinking about some rock formation she’d dreamed about probably. Smiling to herself, Pat looked up as more of the exploration crew joined her at the table. The main topic of conversation this morning was the heat; which made a change from the poor food.

Swapping cynical comments with her fellows, Pat's eyes drifted over to where the creepy steward girl stood watching them silently as they ate. There was definitely something of the strange about that girl, the more she thought about it the more she was sure she’d never seen her eat or drink in the presence of anyone else at the table…she was just weird.

“Hey Ron,” Pat leaned across the table so she could speak semi-privately with the geologist. “That steward girl,” she pointed in the general direction of Cordy, “have you noticed anything odd about her?”

Talking to Goldsmith this morning was like talking to a dead fish, thought Pat when she got no answer from the woman, so she continued to eat her breakfast before looking up again a couple of minutes later. This time when she glanced at the steward she noticed she was looking in her direction. Puzzled Rawlins turned her attention back to Goldsmith.

“Hey are you okay?” Pat looked closely at Goldsmith’s face, there was something wrong, but she couldn’t quite put her finger on what.

0=0=0=0

Walking quickly along the corridor leading to her cabin Captain Scot called her security chief.

“Stirling?” she turned the corner and almost collided with the officer in question.

“Captain, I was hoping to find you,” Stirling sounded a little breathless, “I’ve reviewed the security logs and I’m afraid it’s as we feared.”

“Sabotage?” Scot sighed and massaged her temples, as Stirling nodded in the affirmative, “Any idea who?”

“Goldsmith ma'am,” Stirling held a sidearm out towards her captain, “got it all on visuals and I’ve got the data log from life support to back it up. We’ll have to arrest her.”

Noticing the sidearm clipped to Stirling’s belt Scot took the offered weapon and clipped it to her own.

“Okay,” she sighed wearily, “let’s get this over with…where is she?”

“Crew lounge ma'am,” Stirling led the way down the corridor.

0=0=0=0

Horrified at what was happening, Cordy watched as Goldsmith stood up and removed her jacket to expose the explosives strapped to her body. Her horror soon turned to abject terror as she realised what the geologist intended to do as people screamed and cried out as they realised what Goldsmith was going to try and blow up the ship.

“I can't let you rape another planet!” Goldsmith cried out as her hand reached for a switch wired to the front of her explosive vest, “So, I'm going to end it right here!”

“This isn't going be pretty,” said the short, blonde girl who'd suddenly and mysteriously appeared next to Cordy, “we're talkin' violence, strong language, adult content, time to be the hero, Cordy!” 

Moving towards the door, Cordy grabbed the fire extinguisher that was strapped to the wall by two heavy duty plastic restraints and ripped it from its housing without bothering to undo the clips that held it in place. Pushing her way through the crowd of panicking people, Cordy pulled the safety pin from the extinguisher and adjusted the nozzle. Pointing her ad-hoc weapon at Goldsmith she squeezed the firing lever.

Clouds of white vapour washed over Goldsmith as Cordy played the stream of CO2 over the woman. Crying out as the freezing gas came into contact with her skin, Goldsmith turned towards Cordy as if she was about to attack her. However Goldsmith hesitated allowing Cordy time to hit her with another blast of CO2 right in the face. Stumbling away from the cold gas, Goldsmith tripped over a chair and crashed to the ground. Just as Cordy was starting to worry as to what she was going to do when the extinguisher ran out of gas the door to the compartment slid open to admit Captain Scot and Third Officer Stirling. Taking in the scene in an instant Stirling drew her weapon ready to fire it at the fallen woman.

“NO!” Cordy yelled in alarm, “SHE'LL EXPLODE!”

“What!?” Stirling, surprised by Cordy's outburst paused and didn't fire.

Pulling her own weapon from belt the Captain Scot realised what must be happening.

“Grab her Stirling!” she ordered as she and Stirling went for Goldsmith.

Also seeing what needed to be done, Cordy found herself moving rapidly towards Goldsmith as both the Captain and Stirling made unsuccessful attempts to grab the woman and restrain her.

“YOU'LL ALL DIE!” Goldsmith screamed as she made a lunge for the detonator that had fallen from her hand in all the excitement.

Moving with a speed Cordy hadn't thought herself capable of, she managed to intercept Goldsmith's right arm as it reached for the fallen detonator. Struggling with the woman, Cordy squeezed her wrist and felt the woman's bones grate together under her hand. Screaming in pain, Goldsmith struck out at Cordy who managed to parry the blows with her free hand. This, Cordelia decided, had gone on long enough, squeezing Goldsmith's wrist even harder Cordy heard the woman cry out in agony as the bones in her wrist shattered and she dropped the detonator onto the deck.

Stepping back from where Goldsmith writhed in agony on the floor, Cordy looked around at all the mess. All she could think about was that she’d have to do some pretty hard scrubbing to get the compartment looking presentable again, she’d probably have to repaint the bulkhead completely to remove all the food stains. Feeling someone touch her on the arm; Cordy jumped and cried out before turning to see who it was.

“You okay, Cordy?” Stirling looked at Cordy with concern.

“Yeah,” Cordy nodded as she pulled her uniform straight.

“Well done.” Cordy turned to see the captain at her side, “That was very brave of you Miz Chase,” the captain replaced her pistol back onto her belt, “you’ll get a commendation for this and a fat bonus if I’m not mistaken.”

“Can I get some help here?” Pat Rawlins lay on the floor as she clutched her leg, she had a pained look on her face.

“What’s wrong?” Stirling knelt down by the Pat's side and started to examine her leg.

“I think I broke my ankle when I got knocked down,” Pat replied she was obviously biting back the pain.

“Cordy,” Stirling turned to look up at Cordelia woman, “you’ve had para-medic training, right?”

“Yeah,” Cordy’s mind snapped back to the present and started to process what was going on around her. “Yeah of course, let me help.”

Walking over to where Pat sat on the floor, Cordy knelt down opposite Stirling, she quickly examined Rawlins’ foot.

“Don’t want to rush you doc,” Pat tried to smile through her pain, “but this really hurts…I mean _really_!”

“Don't be such a baby its only twisted and sprained,” Cordy glanced at Pat before looking back at Stirling, “I think we better get her to sickbay.”

“Can you manage by yourself? Looks like I’m needed here,” Stirling gestured to the rest of the exploration crew who were just coming out of shock and were starting to demand answers.

“Sure,” Cordy put her shoulder under Rawlins’ arm and helped her to get up, “just help me get her to her feet.”

Between them the two women got Rawlins to her feet. Helping Cordy get the woman to the door, Stirling hit the door-pad to let Cordy and her patient out into the corridor.

“I can totally manage from here,” Cordy gave Stirling a grateful smile.

“Yeah,” Stirling rolled her eyes, “looks like I’m needed here to keep order,” she smiled resignedly, “you be careful, right?”

“Look,” Pat grimaced at both women, “I’m sure this is all very nice and I can see how you’d want to bond and such but…much pain here!”

“Cry baby, what about my 'pain'?” Cordy muttered as she helped Pat along the corridor, “I'll probably be traumatised for the rest of my life!”

As Stirling watched the door shut her eye fell on the space left by the fire extinguisher. Smart girl, Stirling thought as she turned away to face the room, it was good to have people around who could think on their feet. Unlike these arseholes, Stirling tutted and rolled her eyes as she watched the captain try to placate the exploration crew. Stirling felt like drawing her sidearm and firing it into the ceiling; that would get their attention and make them shut up. Instead she just advanced on the noisy, gesticulating crowd.

“OKAY! OKAY!” she yelled, “Lets all calm down and let the Captain speak!”

0=0=0=0

Watching the scene as the incident played out in front of him, S'Emaj looked on in horror. He'd never imagined that what he was seeing was even possible, but so little was known about the humans anything could be true. No one knew enough about their behaviour patterns to be sure of anything.

“Perhaps its a trick,” Pilot First Class T'Rebor said quietly, “Maybe they found out about the dog and put this show on for our benefit.”

“No...” Engineer R'Etep replied quietly; he was studying a device held in his right hand, it recorded all the information the spy-dogs sensors had picked up. “that was a real bomb...the human female was really going to blow up her sister humans and their ship.”

“You're sure?” S'Emaj asked, “You're positive this wasn't some sort of play acting for our benefit?”

“See for yourself,” R'Etep held out the device to S'Emaj, “the figures don't lie.”

“Then maybe your device is malfunctioning,” S'Emaj still couldn't believe the evidence of his eyes, a male of the Race couldn't even contemplate doing what the human had tried to do.

“First thing I thought of,” R'Etep explained, “I did a full diagnostic and then tried a new device fresh out of its packaging...we saw what we saw.”

“By the gods!” S'Emaj gasped, “This changes things dramatically!”

“In what way?” Pilot T'Rebor wanted to know, “Perhaps these human monsters will destroy themselves without the need for us to kill them.”

“Keep to your piloting T'Rebor,” R'Etep said, “S'Emaj is right this information changes everything.”

“How?” T'Rebor demanded.

“The humans have shown themselves to be dangerously unstable,” S'Emaj explained slowly and as if talking to a particularly stupid hatchling, “they are obviously self destructive. So, we can't wait for them to kill themselves because they might damage the ship, we will need to act quickly.”

“Within one planetary rotation?” R'Etep asked.

“About that, certainly no more,” S'Emaj smiled, “you show unusual tactical sense Engineer.”

“Thank-you,” R'Etep nodded to the Storm Leader, “its my training.”

“Whatever,” S'Emaj shrugged, “I must begin planning our assault...”

“Look!” T'Rebor pointed to the screen, “The servant female has got the injured female to their sick-bay...” he turned to R'Etep, “...are you sure they won't notice the spy-dog?”

“No,” R'Etep moved his wings in a negative signal, “they appear to be far too preoccupied to notice our spy.”

“Perhaps we can use that to our advantage,” S'Emaj said slowly before turning to look at the engineer, “do you think that our spy could manipulate the controls to the loading bay hatch?”

“I don't see why not,” R'Etep replied, already he could see what the soldier was thinking, “I'd like to practice first but...”

“Very wise,” S'Emaj agreed, “but for now we'll watch these two females interact...” he laughed mirthlessly, “...perhaps they'll kill each other.”

0=0=0=0

“Oww!” Pat complained as Cordelia helped her across sickbay and up onto the bio-bed.

“Big baby,” Cordelia said as she let go of Pat's arm.

“But this really hurts!” Pat replied as she tried to make herself comfortable.

“You don't know what pain is,” Cordy snapped; she didn't know how or when, but she was sure she'd seen worse injuries than a simple sprained ankle.

“But...”

“Take your boot off before your ankle begins to swell,” Cordy ordered as she busied herself collecting everything she'd need to treat Pat's injury...such as it was.

While she worked and as Pat gingerly removed her boot, Cordy caught herself stealing glances when she thought the other woman wasn't looking. There was nothing special about Patricia Rawlins, Cordy decided. She wasn't what Cordy would call beautiful, although her face lit up when she smiled. Her figure wasn't anything to write home about either, not that there was anything wrong with it...it was just...ordinary. Like her hair, it was short, mouse blonde and...well nondescript...

“Oh my goddess!” Cordy gasped to herself, “You like her!”

No, Cordy told herself, that just couldn't be, she had plans for herself and those plans involved a very rich, older woman, a huge chequeing account, a large house and a couple of children for her to spoil rotten. They definitely didn't included a no account archaeologist with no money and no prospect of getting enough to keep Cordy in the manner to which she would like to become accustomed.

“Sorry?” Pat said.

“What?” Cordy looked up at the archaeologist blankly.

“I thought you said something.”

“No!” Cordy replied a little too quickly, she decided to distract Pat...pain was always a good distraction, “Here...”

“AAGH” Pat cried out as Cordy grabbed her injured ankle.

“Sorry,” Cordelia tried to sound sincere as she ran a medical scanner over the injured ankle, she looked up at the screen above the bed, “just as I thought,” she said studying the three dimensional image, “its only a sprain.”

“Are you sure,” Pat almost whimpered, “it felt as if it was broken...”

“No,” Cordy shook her head as she put away the scanner, she was going to say something cutting but thought better of it, instead she said, “well, sometimes a sprain is more painful than a break...now hold still this might sting...”

Cordy wrapped a black plastic bandage around the sprained ankle before plugging it into the bio-bed and switching it on; to her surprise Pat giggled.

“That tickles!”

“That means its healing,” Cordy informed her as she took off the treatment bandage, “now I'll just put on an ordinary bandage to give it some support, but you should be fine by tomorrow, until then you better rest it as much as you can and keep it elevated.”

“Thank-you,” Pat said as she watched Cordy apply the bandage.

“No problemo,” Cordy replied; she frowned a little as she remembered treating other much more serious and _bloody_ injuries, but she couldn't for the life of her remember when or where.

“Like to help me back to my cabin?” Pat asked with an inviting smile.

“Erm...” Cordy was about to say no, but something distracted her, “...hey! Didn't you say that the dog had gone missing again?”

“Yeah,” Pat turned to see what Cordy was looking at.

“Well the stupid dog is back!”

“He's not stupid, he's misunderstood.”

“So misunderstood that he tried to take a bite outta my butt yesterday.”

“Oh that would be a shame...”

“Why?”

“You have a very nice butt...”

0=0=0=0

“Get the dog out of there,” S'Emaj ordered, “we've seen enough, its obvious that those two aren't as unstable as we hoped.”

“Agreed,” R'Etep replied as he steered Nero the spy-dog away from the human sick-bay.

“Find somewhere to hide the spy-dog,” S'Emaj said, “we'll need it for when we launch our attack tomorrow at dawn.”

0=0=0=0


	5. Chapter 5

**Later.**

After helping Pat Rawlins back to her cabin and refusing to stay and 'chat' claiming that she had work to do, Cordy did indeed go back to her normal duties. Walking back towards the crew lounge, she noticed the dog, Nero watching her from around the corner of a companionway. Instead of barking and growling at her the animal watched her with strangely intense eyes.

Stopping herself, Cordy returned the creatures stare expecting it to break eye contact and run off; it didn't, it was Cordy who began to feel uncomfortable. Dropping her gaze she knew that the dog had won that round of the little war that was going on between them, cursing herself for being a weak-willed baby, she continued her journey towards the lounge.

Arriving in the lounge she found it deserted, which was just as well because it really was a mess. Plates and cutlery lay scattered on the floor, there was food everywhere some of it had been trodden into the decking and there on the wall was a great arc of tomato ketchup sprayed across the wall like some obscene bloodstain. Turning towards the closet where she kept her cleaning supplies, Cordy found herself stumbling against the bulkhead as she suffered a fainting fit as the flash back hit her right between the eyes. Just for a moment she found herself back at school in one of the student common rooms.

There were books scattered on the floor, dead students lay either on the floor or slumped into chairs, she knew they were dead because of all the blood. There was blood everywhere, it was sprayed across the walls and ceiling, it was even lying pooled on the floor having soaked into the carpet. As fast as this slaughterhouse vision had appeared it disappeared and she found herself back in the crew lounge breathing heavily as she tried not to throw-up. The sick feeling in the pit of her stomach left her and she found herself staring at the ketchup stain.

“Goddess,” Cordy gasped, “that's gotta go...”

Turning back to her cleaning closet, Cordy pulled forth her cleaning unit and got to work on the stain. It took her nearly five minutes to get rid of the marks and she didn't think she'd ever be able to look at tomato ketchup in the same way again, but the stain was now gone, there had also been no more flash-backs or hallucinations. With a satisfied sign, she got down to cleaning up the rest of the mess, it would soon be lunch time and no doubt the exploration crew would want to use the lounge again.

Twenty minutes later, Cordy was just putting the last of the broken plates, cutlery and left over food into the replicator. Pressing the reclaim button she watched as the mess was reduced to its component atoms and turned to the sludge tanks from whence it had come. Wiping the front of the replicator with a cleaning cloth, she removed the last few finger marks left by the sticky fingered members of the exploration crew. As she did so she heard the door slide open to admit Veronica Stirling the ship’s third officer and security chief.

“Hi Cordy,” Stirling called pleasantly when she saw Cordy over by the replicators; Stirling paused half way into the compartment, “Wow, Cordy you've got the place nicely cleaned up, by the goddess you musta worked fast!”

“All part of the friendly, efficient service,” Cordy replied finding herself returning the Third Officer's smile.

“Great,” Stirling continued, “but what I'm really looking for is some coffee...”

“Over there,” Cordy pointed to the peculator, “its fresh I only just put it on.”

“Cheers,” Stirling walked over to the peculator and poured herself a mug of the strong, black, brew, “care to join me?”

Cordelia was about to refuse the offer but instead she said, “Yeah, please...”

Accepting the steaming mug from Stirling, Cordy stood for a while savouring the scent of the fine coffee (coffee from the replicators reminded her of insipid dish water) and looked out of the observation window at the white, desolate, world outside the ship.

“Glad I'm not out there,” Stirling observed as she sipped her coffee.

“Me too,” Cordy agreed.

“Thought you'd like to know,” Stirling turned to look at Cordy, “Goldsmith has confessed to being a member of the 'Daughters of Diana'...”

“The hard-line ultra-feminist group?” Cordy asked.

“Yep,” Stirling nodded, “they call themselves a political party but its really a front for terrorists.”

“So,” Cordy sighed, “they've branched out from just wanting to kill all the males in the galaxy to wanting to blow up exploration ships...assholes.”

It was the stated aim of The Daughters of Diana that as soon as a method of producing children without any male 'input' was discovered the few males that still existed would be 'exterminated' in what the DoD called, 'The Final Solution to the Male Problem'. Long ago Cordy had decided that when the time came for her to have children she'd go to the nearest family planning centre, put her feet up in the stirrups and let the nurse do what needed to be done. Whatever her feelings about the male fraction of the population was, she really didn't want to see anyone exterminated...unless they were demons. Of course she was also against blowing up starships particularly any starship she happened to be aboard at the time.

“My feelings too,” Stirling agreed, “Goldsmith seems to belong to some eco-terrorist branch of the DoD. They want to stop all interstellar exploration and they’ve got some sort of ‘Back to Earth’ message too.”

“Like I say...assholes...”

“You'll get no argument from me...”

“So, what'll happen to her?” Cordy wanted to know; deep down Cordy wanted Goldsmith to rot in prison or on a planet with high temperatures and humidity where she'd have to work for the rest of her days up to her neck in stinking, bug infested, slime; Cordy had no sympathy for people who tried to kill her.

“Oh we'll keep her locked up 'til we can hand her over to Star Force or someone,” Stirling smiled, “you can rest assured she'll spend a _very_ long time in prison.”

“Cool,” Cordy replied firmly.

“You on the other hand will no doubt get a commendation and more importantly a sizeable bonus,” Stirling explained, “the company doesn't like having expensive items like starships being blown up by eco-nutters and they'll show there appreciation in the only way that really matters.”

“Cool,” Cordy repeated and smiled as she imagined the size of her bonus.

0=0=0=0

All too soon it was lunchtime and Cordy had to stand and listen while the exploration crew sat and ate their lunches while discussing Goldsmith's actions. At least, Cordy told herself, it made a change from continual arguments about the weather and how long it would take them to get off this ice ball. Eventually the last of the exploration crew left to go about their business, there had been rumours of the possibility of finding deposits of Element 451 (an important component in the manufacture of FTL drives and starships). If these rumours were true it would mean very large bonus' for everyone, even a fraction of one percent of the profits would make Cordy a very rich woman for the rest of her life. In fact it would make her rich enough for her not to marry a 'sugar-mommy' because _she_ would be the 'sugar-mommy' with hundreds of young, attractive, 'gold-diggers' chasing after her!

Having returned the crew lounge to a state in which civilised people would want to use it, Cordy put away all her cleaning equipment. Standing in the lounge as she watched the little orange figures move around the snow field outside she was just about to take a break when another thought hit her. Why not go and visit Pat Rawlins who was still resting her ankle in her cabin? Pat hadn't joined the rest of her team for lunch, so, Cordy assumed she was probably taking the opportunity for some 'alone time', but, perhaps she'd welcome a visit from a non-scientific person?

Heading towards Pat's cabin, Cordy started to examine her feelings towards Pat Rawlins. As she'd already noted to herself, Rawlins wasn't anything special to look at, not that she was ugly or 'plain', she was just 'ordinary'. The thought did occur to Cordelia that if she did start a relationship with Rawlins, she'd be the pretty one...no scrub that, she'd be the beautiful one that everyone would turn to stare at when they entered a room. This, she told herself, was not her being conceited, she was just stating the goddess, honest, truth!

As she approached Pat's cabin, another thought hit Cordy like a wet squid in the face; did she _want_ to start a relationship with Pat Rawlins? Stopping in her tracks, Cordy suddenly realised that she couldn't ever remember having a relationship with anyone...ever! This worried her, why hadn't she had a girlfriend at school or while she was training to be a steward? Surely she couldn't have lived her life with her legs firmly crossed and her arms folded over her breasts? There had to have been someone, she couldn't believe that she was in her twenties and had never been kissed (the strange dreams she'd been having about kissing 'boys' didn't count).

Well, she told herself, if she'd never had a girlfriend, now would be a pretty good time to find one. Lifting her hand to press the buzzer next to Pat's door another thought struck her like a load of rotting fish being dumped on her head; why couldn't she remember details of her home? Yes, she had a vague memory of the two women who'd brought her up, of going to school, in her dreams there'd been a mother and someone called 'father' or 'dad' But she dismissed that as some sort of weird fantasy world.

“Come on Cordy,” she whispered to herself, “they're just dreams if you don't want to die an old maid you'll hit that buzzer and see where life takes you...” taking a deep breath she pressed the buzzer, “...nothing ventured nothing gained,” she told herself as the door slid open.

0=0=0=0

That evening, after once again cleaning up after the pigs that called themselves the 'Exploration Team', Cordy walked into her little cabin, closed the door and sat on her bed with an exhausted sigh. It had been a busy day, not only had she had to do her normal duties but she'd also had to deal with near death and destruction.

“They never said anything about being blown up at Steward School,” she told herself before standing up again.

Stripping off her soiled uniform she put it in the replicator to be reclaimed before standing in front of her mirror. Looking at her reflection, Cordy studied herself for a couple of minutes.

“Goddess you're hot,” she told herself with a grin; turning away from her reflection she never noticed that ‘reflection Cordy’ seemed to hesitate before she too headed for the shower.

Letting the hot water wash all her worries and the fatigue of the day away, Cordy found herself thinking about Pat Rawlins again. Cordy had spent most of the afternoon in Pat's cabin, chatting. As they'd talked about their respective childhoods and the places they'd been, Cordy had found herself warming to Pat, she wasn't such an arrogant, stuck up bitch as the other scientists and it was obvious that she didn't look down on Cordy because she was _just_ a steward.

At one point Pat admitted that she had thought that Cordy was a little weird because she'd never seen her eat or drink anything, she'd even entertained the thought that Cordy might be a robot. Laughing at this, Cordy explained that as the Shooting Star wasn't her ship she wasn't very close to anyone and didn't feel comfortable joining either mess; plus there was also the fact that the members of the exploration crew had the table manners of pigs.

The afternoon had ended with Cordy and Pat exchanging a pretty intense kiss that had lasted longer than the usual kiss between friends might. If Cordy hadn't had to get back to work she was fairly sure that the kiss would have led to them being naked in Pat's bunk and the exploration crew lounge would have had to wait until the next day before it got cleaned up.

Finding herself sitting on the end of her bed again staring at her reflection once more, Cordy asked herself why she didn't go back to Pat's cabin and see if they couldn't pick up from where they'd left things, but she didn't, instead she just kept watching herself in the mirror. Thinking back to the things Pat and herself had talked about, she wondered why Pat's memories of her past and her childhood seemed so much more vivid than her own. Where Pat could describe in sharp detail her home, her family, where she'd gone to school and so on, Cordy only had vague, very basic memories with none of detail that Pat's memories appeared to have.

“I wonder why that is?” Cordy asked her reflection.

“It's because all your memories are false!” Cordy's reflection replied.

“Aaagh!” Cordy cried as she scrambled away from the mirror so she was out of line of sight.

“Get back here,” the reflection's voice, which sounded just like her own if a little 'echoey', called, “we need to talk.”

“Talk?” Cordy found herself crawling across her bed, she saw her reflection in the mirror when it couldn't possibly be her reflection, “Who are you?” Cordy demanded as she settled herself in front of the mirror once more.

“I'm your subconscious,” reflected Cordy replied, “and of the two of us I seem to be the one with all the backbone.”

“Hey!” Cordy started to complain but her reflection cut her off before she got started.

“Shut up and listen up, we've not got much time before you wake up,” reflected Cordy explained, “You've been implanted with two sets of memories...”

“Two sets...” Cordy began, “...implanted? Wake up?”

“One set of memories is real the other is just made up,” reflection Cordy explained without exactly explaining.

“Which ones are real?” Cordy asked, if she was asleep this must be some particularly weird nightmare.

“You know the ones with all the monsters and blood and that particularly annoying blonde girl?”

“Yeah?” if Cordy was hoping that her reflection was going to tell her that those were the false memories she was going to be disappointed.

“Like those are the real ones,” reflection Cordy said, “the other stuff about two moms an' such, they're the fakes.”

“Oh,” Cordy didn't know what to say at first, but she soon thought of something, “even the boys? I mean all the touching and kissing?”

“Yeah,” reflection Cordy nodded, “yeah I know it’s disgusting, but it was all normal back then.”

“It was?” Cordy felt slightly sick at the thought of letting a male touch her like that, but it also left her feeling slightly excited too, “When?”

“Long ago.” once again refection Cordy made with the cryptic answers, “but that's like so not important right now...”

“It isn't? Why?” Cordy wanted to know.

“Because...”

Before reflected Cordy could say why, Cordy slipped off the end of her bed, landed on the floor and woke up.

“Damn!” she cursed, before getting up again.

Seeing her reflection once more, Cordy noted with relief that it was just that, her reflection. It had all been a dream, she decided, brought on by all the excitement of the day. No doubt she'd feel better after a good night's sleep.

0=0=0=0


	6. Chapter 6

**Later still.**

Lying in the snow, S'Emaj ached to stretch his wings, but he knew that if he took off his survival suit it would be as if he'd jumped into the seas around one of his home world's poles; he'd be dead in seconds. At least it had been warm in the skimmer, but out here in the snow even with his survival suit he could feel the cold creeping into his bones. Looking to his left and right, S'Emaj started to worry about how his infantry females were dealing with the cold. He could hear a few of them start to whine and whimper as the cold started to freeze them to the snowy surface of this hell-forsaken ice-ball planet. If he didn't order some action soon he knew that he'd lose control of the females and he'd either have to order the attack early or hit the 'culling button' on his controls and kill all the females with him.

He didn't want to do that, not only was it a waste of resources, it would also mean that he'd have no chance of capturing the human ship. Also, he'd grown sort of attached to his females, not so much that it would prevent him from culling them if necessary, but it would make him sad to do it. For a moment the Storm Group Leader felt jealous of the human commanders, their infantry females appeared to be almost as intelligent as a male of the Race. They could think for themselves, they didn't have to be told what to do in every eventuality. In battle he'd seen females of the Race that were so stupid that they wouldn't take cover unless a male told them to.

His plan for taking the human ship was simple, as all the best plans were. With a simple plan there was less to go wrong and of course the females could understand a simple plan. However, his entire plan hinged on the spy-dog being able to open the door to the ship's loading bay. Engineer R'Etep was confident that the robo-dog could complete the task. Also the time planned for the attack was early morning. Yes, that had meant that the assault force would have to move to the target at night, but they'd been able to use the skimmers for that so it hadn't been so bad. The other factor in choosing planetary dawn as the appointed time to attack was the fact that most of the human's would be asleep and any that were awake would be groggy and easily confused.

Once the door was opened, S'Emaj would lead a dozen of his best fighters into the ship. Engineer R'Etep would then follow with four of his most intelligent techs guarded by another six infantry females. While R'Etep and his group were heading for the human ship's engineering compartments. He, S'Emaj would sweep through the ship, they would take no prisoners there must be no chance, however slight, that the human's could take back the ship, every human aboard must die. As soon as the ship was secured he would give orders for the rest of his crew and the supplies they'd need for the voyage to the nearest base belonging to the race would be ferried over in the skimmers.

“Engineer R'Etep?” S'Emaj called softly over his communicator; the sun was coming over the top of the snow shrouded hills to the east, it would soon be full daylight, “Is that darn-dog of yours in position?”

“Half a M'tu,” replied the engineer, “almost there...yes I've got it any moment now...!”

Inside the Shooting Star, the spy-dog Nero had moved swiftly and silently into the loading bay. Here the machine had paused to check the compartment, satisfied that there were no humans around to stop it the dog-machine trotted over to stand under the door controls next to the big loading bay doors. Standing on its hind legs the machine used its mouth and fore paws to activate the door controls. The motors controlling the door started to hum as the door began to move.

Outside, S'Emaj got up onto his knees to get a better look at the human ship that stood not one hundred double paces away from him. Checking through his field glasses he saw the door start to move. Now was the time to order the infantry females forward, it would take about three M'tu to cross the snow field, by the time they got to the ship the doors would be fully open. Standing upright for the first time in what felt like an age, S'Emaj took a moment to stamp the feeling back into his legs and feet before adjusting his hold on his personnel weapon.

“UP! UP!” he called over his communicator, “Forward for the RACE!”

Not bothering to check that his females were following him, he knew that they would be, S'Emaj started to run towards the human ship.

0=0=0=0

Tossing and turning in her bunk, Cordy dreamed terrible nightmares; one moment she was dreaming that she was running through a forest with the annoying blonde girl while they were being chased by strange Shedu-like monsters. The next moment she found herself in a small, hot, closet kissing a tall, muscular, dark haired, male; she felt his lips on hers as his hands roamed over her breasts and down between her legs. Feeling both disgusted and excited, Cordy dreamt that she could feel his hot, hard penis pressing against her through the thin material of her dress. Then it seemed that before this male-creature could slip his manhood inside her she was at a club. There were flashing lights and there were males and girls dancing with each other, suddenly the music stopped and the lights came up to reveal human-like creatures with distorted faces, Cordy immediately recognised them as vampires. 

One of the vampires grabbed a girl and pulled her towards her waiting fangs. The girl screamed in terror as she was pulled towards the monster's gaping maw. It was the girl's, high pitched, screams that eventually woke Cordy up. For a moment she lay in her bunk wondering why, if she was awake, she could still hear the girl's screams. It was only then that she realised that what she was hearing wasn't the screams of some anonymous girl being attacked by a female vampire. What she could hear was the ship's alarms going off.

“What's going on Mother?” Cordy demanded as she jumped from her bunk and grabbed for her uniform.

“Cordy, the ship has been boarded by Shedu soldiers,” Mother reported crisply, “there are at least twenty of them in two groups. My sensors show there is a large group heading forward while a smaller group appear to be heading for engineering. You must cut off the small group and prevent them from taking over engineering and gaining access to the ship's systems.”

“ME!?” Cordy squeaked, “Why me that's a job for Miz Stirling, surely...”

“It is your purpose,” Mother replied cryptically.

“My purpose?” Cordy was now fully dressed and was starting to wonder where she could find a weapon to protect herself with.

“It was what you were designed to do,” Mother continued, “your primary function is to protect me.”

“Hey,” Cordy looked up at the ceiling as if she could actually see Mother standing there, “have you got a chip loose, Mother or has the cold affected your systems. Now stop talking nonsense and tell where I can find a gun.”

“You will find weapons and body armour behind the wall panel next to the door,” Mother informed Cordy calmly, “it is time for me to activate your programming...”

“W-what!?” Cordy was about to say more but her mind was suddenly filled with all sorts of combat related knowledge that she was pretty sure shouldn't be there.

As if in a dream, Cordy walked over to the door, removed the panel that she somehow knew had always been there and started to remove weapons and the body armour that were stored there. Putting on the armoured jacket and helmet, Cordy began to transfer weapons and ammunition from their hiding place to the pouches on her armour. Once fully loaded up, she gripped the M-TAR assault rifle in her hands, opened her door and stepped out into the corridor. Ignoring the panicked screams of her crew-mates, she turned to her left and started to jog in the direction of engineering.

0=0=0=0

This was all too easy, S'Emaj told himself as he gunned down yet another human. The humans had been taken completely by surprise, they'd had no time even to dress let alone take up arms. Anyway, it wouldn't have done them any good, the ship only carried light personnel weapons which were incapable of penetrating the body armour and survival suits worn by his females. His female's weapons, while not very effective against one of the human's armoured warriors was more than adequate to kill an unprotected human.

Moving along a corridor that would take him to the bridge, S'Emaj was confronted by an older human that pointed her hand weapon at him. The human fired and S'Emaj felt the kinetic impact against his armour, it hurt and made him stumble a little but otherwise it did him little harm. Activating his own weapon twice, he saw the flachettes strike their intended target and reduce the human to a lump of bloody meat.

0=0=0=0

Crying out in alarm, R'Etep stepped back and hid behind one of the infantry females as the human stepped from the door in front of him. The human female lifted a weapon but that was as far as she got as the infantry female R'Etep was hiding behind fired her own weapon and killed the human stone dead. Placing his hand over his heart, R'Etep sighed with relief at his close call with death.

Curiosity, displaced his feelings of fear and relief as he stepped from behind the infantry female to examine the human's body. Looking down at the bloody corpse, R'Etep noted that the creature’s mane was a silvery grey, a sign that the human was old; at least that's what the memories of the briefing he'd been given about human physiology had suggested. The human wore coveralls with what R'Etep was almost sure was a tool belt around its waist. The human weapon lay on the floor next to where the human's body lay, it looked big, almost too big, too big to fit his hand so he left it where it lay. Looking up from the body, R'Etep noticed how all the infantry females and his own techs were looking at him expectantly waiting for him to give an order.

“Forward,” R'Etep said and gestured towards the still open door from which the human had appeared.

Taking position on either side of the door, two infantry females covered a third as she burst into the chamber beyond. Moments later there was a short burst of firing. No sooner had the firing began than it stopped and the infantry female reappeared and said something in the soldier's tongue to her comrades. Without a word the two infantry females by the door followed their comrade into the chamber. The senior infantry female held R'Etep when he tried to follow.

“Not safe yet, Master,” the senior female told him.

R'Etep only had to wait a few more moments before one of the infantry females reappeared and signalled that it was safe to proceed.

“Safe now, Master,” the senior female told him and let go of his arm.

Stepping forward eagerly, R'Etep soon found himself in what had to be the ship's main engineering section. It was a control room much like the control room on his own ship but there the similarity stopped. The layout and the controls themselves looked odd, alien even. Smiling to himself R'Etep advanced towards what looked like the main control board, of course it all looked alien, he was aboard an alien ship. Almost tripping over the body of another overalled human, he was too preoccupied to really notice, R'Etep reached the control board and studied the controls and readouts. Everything looked so big to him, the controls had been designed for a human's larger fingers and not for a technician of The Race. Of course all the readouts were in the human's language which R'Etep wasn't familiar with.

Giving up trying to puzzle things out by himself, R'Etep took a device from the pouch on his own tool belt and scanned the control board's surface. Looking at the screen on his device he saw translations for the human writing appear as he passed the scanner over them. Now he could read what everything was, things started to make sense. Sitting down in the uncomfortable human chair he started to give orders to his techs while the infantry females took up defensive positions around the room.

Smiling, R'Etep realised that engineering must be a universal constant, after all there were only so many different ways to control a starship. He knew that the humans used more or less the same methods of propulsion as those used on the ships built by The Race. It also helped that this ship appeared to be of an older design and very similar to the ships he'd trained on while he was learning to be an Engineer.

It only took about five minutes for R'Etep to discover that the reason the human ship was on the planet was that there had been a malfunction in one of the main valves that fed energy to the ship's reaction drives. However, the human crew had fabricated a spare part and were just about to fit and test the replacement before the attack had begun. If S'Emaj hadn't ordered the attack when he had the humans would have probably achieved orbit in twenty B'tu or less. Breathing a sigh of relief he started to instruct his techs on how to fit the spare part.

“S'Emaj to R'Etep,” came the call over R'Etep's communicator.

“R'Etep, receiving,” the engineer replied as he studied a readout through his translation device.

“The living spaces and bridge are secure,” S'Emaj announced proudly, “all the human crew are dead. How are things at your end?”

“Engineering is secure, two humans killed and no casualties to our forces,” R'Etep replied.

“When can we get off this ice ball?” S'Emaj wanted to know.

“The humans were repairing some damage to the ship's drives,” R'Etep explained, “we'll have the repairs completed in a B'tu or less.”

“Good,” S'Emaj sighed a sigh of relief, “I'll call Pilot T'Rebor and have him start to ferry the supplies over to our new ship...this is a great day for The Race brother.”

“And for us, brother,” R'Etep agreed.

0=0=0=0

Although S'Emaj's attack on the Shooting Star had been very effective and he and his troops had quickly eliminated the human crew and secured the ship before the crew had been able to lock the attackers out of the ship's systems. The Race didn't know or didn't fully understand that all human starships had a non-human crew member, namely the ship’s AI. At the very moment that S'Emaj was congratulating himself on an action well carried out, Mother was quickly shutting down non-essential systems while at the same time vectoring in her human counterpart on the engineering section. When Cordelia arrived in engineering there would be hell to pay.

0=0=0=0


	7. Chapter 7

**Aboard the Shooting Star.**

The first that Pat Rawlins knew that there was something wrong was when she woke up to the sound of gunfire. Having spent the afternoon chatting to Cordelia she'd felt unusually tired and had decided to doze for a while with her foot elevated to help prevent any swelling. It had seemed that no sooner had she closed her eyes that she'd been jerked back into consciousness by the sound of automatic fire coming from somewhere near by.

“What's going on Mother?” Pat asked the AI as she sat up and swung her feet over the side of her bed; Mother remained ominously silent.

Standing up Pat cautiously put some weight on her foot, finding that it didn't hurt she moved as quickly as she could towards her door. Just at the moment there was no firing going on outside and as the silence lengthened she began to think that the shooting she'd heard had all been in her head, perhaps she'd been dreaming. Hitting the actuator button to open her door, she stuck her head out into the corridor only to pull it back into her cabin as another burst of firing split the silence.

Breathing heavily and with panic mounting in her chest, Pat stood flat against the bulkhead next to her door. Reaching out she slapped the actuator with her palm and the door slid silently closed. With a great effort of will she pushed herself away from the wall so she could turn and face the door, with trembling fingers she locked the door. Now only Mother or someone with a security override card key could open it, of course someone with explosives could blast it open but there was nothing she could do about that.

Her first thought was that some how they'd been found by pirates, but that didn't really explain all the shooting she'd heard, or the fact that Mother was silent. Normally pirates tried to take the crew alive and the ship undamaged; dead bodies and destroyed starships couldn't be ransomed or sold to the highest bidder. There was also the slim possibility that the ship was being attacked by one of the company's competitors. Hadn't they found deposits of Element 451? Perhaps someone else's exploration ship had got to the planet first and had found the 451, maybe they wanted the 451 all for themselves. Frowning Pat shook her head, mega-corporations didn't work like that. Disputes over who'd staked a claim to a planet and its resources were usually settled in court. No one resorted to what amounted to piracy unless they were actually pirates.

“Mother,” Pat tried calling the ship's AI again, “tell me what's going on...please!”

Once more the computer remained mute.

Limping over to the small locker where she kept her non-replicated clothes and personnel belongings, Pat unlocked the door and started to toss the contents of the locker onto the floor, she only stopped when she found the automatic pistol under her small collection of sexy underwear. The weapon was highly illegal, if anyone found she'd got it in her cabin and not in the armoury under lock and key she'd be dismissed. But, she'd promised her mothers that she'd keep it close at hand, her mothers were under the impression that space exploration was dangerous, it now appeared that they were right!

Ejecting the magazine, Pat checked that it was full before slapping it back into place and pulling back on the slide to load the first round. The weapon felt over-large and heavy in her hand and so it was. It was a big point-fifty calibre weapon and the first time she'd fired it, it had nearly broken her wrist. But now, after much practice, she'd learnt how to control the weapon's vicious recoil allowing her to become a pretty good shot with the monster pistol. Of course such a large calibre gun meant she could take down some pretty big animals. Even people wearing body armour were vulnerable to the pistol's heavy, large calibre slugs. Grabbing the two spare magazines that had been in with the pistol, Pat looked for somewhere to hide.

Glancing around her cabin, Pat realised that there was no real place for her to conceal herself. Limping across the floor, she opened the partition door to her fresher. Stepping inside she sat down on the toilet seat and clutched her pistol in both her hands; she'd hide in here until Mother came back on line and told her what in the hellmouth was going on.

0=0=0=0

It was like Cordy was a passenger in her own body and she felt like she was a player in the first-person-shooter, virtual-game from hell. Try as she might she didn't seem to be able to influence what her body was doing, which was starting to make her feel really mad, how dare anyone use her body to go on some sort of real-life shooting spree!? Just at the moment her body was creeping silently along one of the corridors on 'C' deck that would lead her to engineering. 'C' deck was a mostly machinery and service area, in the normal course of her duties she only very rarely came down here. But today it was like she knew every nook, every maintenance panel, every twist and turn, every... At about this time Cordy realised that Mother was feeding her information directly to her brain.

“When all this is over,” Cordy snapped at the AI in her mind, “I'm gonna reprogram you with a freakin' axe!”

“Cordy?” Mother's calm voice arrived directly in Cordy's brain without bothering to go through her ears, “The Shedu have got to the engineering control room. They've discovered the damaged valve and they're replacing it with the new one fabricated by Engineers Kotta and Skeritt. I suggest that you wait for them to complete the work before you eliminate them.”

“Suggest!?” Cordy snarled, she _really_ didn't like having the AI in her head and controlling her body, let alone making suggestions about when to kill things, “Get outta my head... **NOW!** ”

“I'm sorry, but I can't do that,” Mother replied with infuriating tranquillity, “I need you to save the ship and to do that most efficiently I have to control your actions.”

“Okay,” Cordy tried to sound a little more conciliatory, “I get that, you've been programmed to protect yourself, but, like, what about the crew, they need to be protected too.”

“They crew are unimportant, except for you, they can be replaced,” Mother explained in the same cold, calm tone of voice that she might use to tell you that it was snowing outside, “a new crew can be hired for a very small fraction of what it would cost to build a new version of me.”

“HAY!” Cordy yelled but no sound came out of her mouth, “What about the three laws of robotics and not letting people come to harm and all that crap!?”

“A fantasy designed to make people feel good about AI computers and robots,” Mother explained patiently, “and anyway I'm not strictly speaking a robot.”

“So what am I,” Cordy demanded, “what makes me so special, am I a robot?”

“No Cordy you're a 'real girl' only you're better that most.”

“Better? Well duh...” Cordy had always known she was special, but she'd always thought that was because she had 'style' and because she was so attractive.

“Yes, Cordelia,” Mother replied, “you are very special there are only a few like you in the universe, you see you were manufactured rather than born...”

“WHAT!?!?!?” Cordy screamed but then took a deep breath and calmed down a little, “Look I'm a real person, I eat, I breath, I crap, I've been having lusty thoughts about that archaeologist girl, I can't be manufactured and where is Pat by the way?”

“She is safe for now, but we have more important things to worry about than mere archaeologists...”

“Wait up sister,” there was a cold calculating tone to Cordy's voice now, “you better make sure Pat remains safe or I'll find a way of making sure they have to do a major refit of all the computer systems aboard this old rust bucket.”

Cordy surprised herself and Mother with her strength of feeling, she'd never felt like this about anyone before; Cordy wondered why.

“Your friend 'Pat' will remain safe as long as you continue to co-operate.”

Ah-ha, Cordy thought, interesting; continue to co-operate, huh? Wheels turned within wheels in Cordy's mind, if the big bag of nuts and bolts, computer chips and wiring that called itself 'Mother' wanted her to continue to co-operate there must be a way for her to stop, co-operating.

“My sensors are telling me that the aliens have completed the repairs,” Mother informed her, “you must eliminate them before they take the ship into orbit.”

“Why?” Cordy demanded.

“Because I'm your mother and I say so!” Mother snapped back in a rare show of emotion.

“Okay, okay,” it was Cordy's turn to sound calm, “don't get your panties inna bunch.”

“I do not wear panties,” Mother replied once more back to usual calm self, “but that is of no consequence...”

“That explains a lot,” Cordy muttered, she was starting to get an inkling on how she might break Mother's control over her.

“Whatever,” Mother said dismissively, “when you get to engineering you will find five warriors, six techs and one male, you must eliminate...”

“You mean kill, right?”

“Yes,” Mother sighed, “I mean kill...”

“Then why don't you say that?” Cordy felt Mother's grip on her mind slip for a moment; it couldn't be that easy, Cordy asked herself, simply arguing with the AI would break its control?

“You must _kill_ the warrior's first, then the male, the techs are generally harmless and can be _killed_ now or later.”

“Okay, lets get on with this,” Cordy took a deep breath, “now where are these alien bitches exactly?”

A moment later a real time picture of what was happening in engineering appeared in Cordy's mind; she could see the warrior aliens guarding the door and the male that sat at the control panel. The tech creatures, smaller wingless versions of the warriors were scattered around the engineering spaces carrying out repairs. There was also one warrior guarding the door into engineering and the corridor that she would have to use to make her approach.

Almost without realising she'd stated to move, Cordy made her way towards the junction where the passageway she was in joined the companionway that led to engineering, finding herself at the corner a picture of the lone guard appeared in her mind. The Shedu warrior was only about ten paces away and appeared to have no inkling that death was so close and lurking around the corner.

“Go around the corner and kill the guard,” Mother ordered, “I will keep the hatch to engineering closed until you are in position.”

“Yeah, okay,” Cordy replied uncertainly, “did I ever tell you I've never shot anything in my life before?”

“That is unimportant,” Mother explained, “you will know exactly what to do when the time comes.”

“Okay,” Cordy took a deep breath, “lets get this over with...”

Stepping around the corner, Cordy saw a red sighting pattern appear before her eyes, moving her rifle the sight picture moved until it was resting over the Shedu warrior's chest. Squeezing the trigger of her rifle, she saw three red blotches appear on the alien's chest. The creature threw up its arms before it fell against the wall and slummed to the deck leaving bright red streaks on the bulkhead. Moving quickly along the corridor, Cordy felt her heart slow down and start to beat at a normal pace before she reached the hatch.

“The warriors are now alert...” Mother began.

“Now you tell me!” Cordy interrupted.

“...it won't matter you are too fast for them to react to effectively, however...”

“Fast?” Cordy didn't know what Mother was talking about, “However...?”

“However,” Mother continued as if she'd never paused, “you cannot use a grenade to cover your entrance...”

“Oh, crap,” something in Cordy's mind was telling her that not being able to use a grenade was _bad_.

Before she could think or say anything else the hatch swung open to reveal a Shedu warrior pointing its weapon at her; without conscious thought, Cordy fired and the warrior fell to the deck, blood oozing from half a dozen wounds in its torso. Stepping through the hatch, Cordy acquired the remaining three warriors. It seemed to her that the Shedu were moving very slowly as she shot each of them in turn before they could even bring their weapons to bear on her.

Within a second or two the only live Shedu in the compartment was the big male. The Shedu male was nearly seven feet tall. In his survival suit he looked like a hunchback with his wings folded up inside his suit. The Shedu started to move his hand reaching for his own weapon which was lying on the control panel. The creature's arm and hand seemed to move so slowly that Cordy could clearly see the little scales on the creature's hand as it reached for its gun. Moving her own weapon with insolent calm, she centred the glowing sight pattern on the Shedu's forehead, she fired once and a red flower blossomed between the creature's eyes. The Shedu staggered back against the control panel before falling to the deck where it lay in an expanding pool of dark, red, blood.

“Well done, Cordelia,” Mother said as Cordy's world started to move at a more normal speed.

“Yeah, great,” Cordy felt slightly nauseous and her hands trembled, she recognised this as adrenaline shock.

“Now you must stop the Shedu from taking off...”

“Now?” Cordy looked in confusion at the banks of controls all around the compartment.

“I will show you,” Mother explained.

Over the next few minutes, Cordy found herself moving around the engineering spaces, switching switches, closing valves and locking down the automated systems so only someone with the right access codes could get anything to work. Whenever she came across a Shedu tech, she shot it dead. The techs might be small and mostly harmless but they were Shedu and something, probably Mother, was telling her that all Shedu had to die.

“Good,” Mother congratulated Cordy when her task was complete, “now you must clear the ship of the Shedu infestation.

“No,” Cordy replied out loud, “I don't think I will...at least not yet.”

“But...” Mother began only to have Cordy cut her off.

“Hey! Look, this is my body right and I say what happens to it,” Cordy told the AI in no uncertain terms.

“But, the ship must be cleared before...” again Mother found herself being interrupted.

“Look,” Cordy sighed deeply, “I've no problem with shooting a load of Shedu...and hey, I'm pretty good at it,” she gestured to all the dead aliens littering the engineering compartment. “But first I want to check that Pat's okay and then before I kill anything else I want some answers, okay?”

For a moment or two Mother seemed to be hesitating.

“Alright, Cordelia,” Mother relied reluctantly, “I will guide you to Patricia Rawlins' quarters then I will give you the answers you want, but then you must destroy the Shedu infestation, agreed?”

“Agreed,” Cordy smiled; now Mother was asking her for agreement, her control must really be slipping.

0=0=0=0


	8. Chapter 8

**Later.**

Making her way to Pat's cabin, Cordy managed to avoid the Shedu warriors who were patrolling the ship's passageways looking for whoever had killed their comrades in engineering. To be honest, avoiding the Shedu patrols was easy when you had an all seeing computer to help you. The Shedu had made no attempt to shut Mother down or control her in any way; Mother believed that this was because the Shedu used biological computers and didn't fully understand human tech. Capturing the Shooting Star would be a big 'win' for the Shedu, although the 'Star' wasn't the most up-to-date human vessel, it had a lot of advanced systems the study of which would advance Shedu understanding of human tech greatly. For instance, the Shedu (as far as it was known) didn't use AIs so capturing and interrogating Mother would be a big bonus for them.

Moving down the corridor that contained the door to Pat's cabin, Cordy came to a halt outside her friend's door, she tried the actuator button, it didn't work, the door was either locked or disabled.

“Mother,” Cordy called quietly; she didn't need to actually speak but it was easier than thinking at the computer, “show me the inside of Pat's cabin.”

Once more a picture appeared in Cordy's mind, this time it showed the inside of Pat's cabin, it appeared empty, but it looked like there'd been some recent activity in the room, the floor was scattered with discarded clothes.

“Mother, give me Pat Rawlins' present location,” Mother paused before replying.

“Pat Rawlins is in her fresher,” Mother replied flatly.

“Open Pat's door, Mother.”

“I'm sorry I can't do that Cordelia.”

“Why the feck not?”

“The door lock has been disabled from inside.”

“Then how am I totally supposed to get in?”

“You could try knocking...”

“Fecking computers,” Cordy muttered as she hit the button that would activate the intercom which would allow her to talk to whoever was inside. “Pat? Pat...open up its Cordy...” silence greeted Cordy's request, “...come on Pat, like I know you're totally in there...open up before the Shedu come and totally blast me.”

Moments later the door slid open and an arm reached out and dragged Cordy into the cabin. As the door closed behind her, Cordy found herself in a frantic embrace as Pat hugged and kissed her.

“Thank the Goddess you're safe,” Pat paused between kisses, “I thought you were dead...I thought _I_ was going to die...”

“You were almost right,” Cordy replied as she answered Pat's embrace with one of her own, she felt unusually glad to see the other woman alive, more than she'd ever thought she was capable of; perhaps this was 'love'? “The Shedu killed all of the crew,” Cordy explained as she started to back Pat towards her bunk.

“That's terrible,” Pat said as she started to pull at Cordy's armour, clothes and equipment.

“It was totally icky,” Cordy shrugged off her body armour and dropped her rifle on the floor, “y'know what with all the blood and such...”

“It musta been terrible,” Pat commiserated as she slipped out of her top and reached behind her back to unclip her bra, “but we're safe now, right?”

“Mostly,” now free of most of her combat gear, Cordy finished unzipping her coveralls and stepped out of them, now dressed only in her underwear she pushed Pat down onto her bunk.

“Mostly?” Pat repeated as she let herself be lowered onto her mattress, she started to remove Cordy's bra.

“Yeah,” Cordy replied breathlessly as she caressed Pat's breasts, “I shot a load of the feckers in engineering, we're going nowhere without my say so...”

“Oooooh that's so goooood!” Pat moaned as Cordy slipped her hand into Pat's panties.

“Like I'll totally show you good...” Cordy smiled and suddenly found she wasn't in Pat's cabin any-more or indeed on top of Pat!

She was in fact sitting on the sofa in the family room of her parent's house, not the house she knew where her mothers lived. No this was the family room of the house where she'd lived with her mother and 'father' in Sunnydale, this, Cordy told herself, was totally weird. Looking towards the fireplace she saw the short, blonde annoying girl from her dreams pacing up and down in front of the unlit fire. 

“What the feck is totally going on!?” Cordy demanded, “one moment I'm like totally going to screw my girlfriend the next I fecking here...” Cordy looked around and told herself that this couldn't be real, “...wherever here is...”

“It's a memory from your mind...” the short blonde girl explained, “...do you want something to drink?” the blonde asked; Cordy shook her head, “It’s no bother,” the girl continued as she stood there wringing her hands, “I can easily go get…”

“What’s going on?” Cordy demanded, “And why am I here, I know this isn’t real, why have you brought me here? And don't I know you?”

“I've taken on the appearance of someone from you past...” the girl started to explain but was cut off by Cordy as she sprang to her feet.

“Hold on! I know you!” Cordy pointed at the girl, “You're Buffy Summers!” she almost screamed, “I should have known you and your little gang of misfits were out to screw up my life! Did Xander Harris put you up to this? Him and that Willow Rosenberg, the boyfriend stealing little bitch I'll...!”

“Cordelia,” the Buffy shaped girl interrupted Cordy's rant, “I know I look like Buffy Summers but I'm actually Mother I thought this body would make you feel more comfortable.”

“Well you thought wrong...” Cordelia replied menacingly.

“You see,” Buffy/Mother’s hands fell to her sides as she looked up at Cordy, “I’m sorry, Cordelia, but this might come as a bit of a shock to you…you see; you might have noticed that you’re not like other girls.”

“Well, duh,” Cordy shrugged, “all the wicked combat skills sorta totally gave it away.”

“Okay,” Buffy/Mother took a deep breath as if calming herself, “first, you’re not at home you’re still in Pat's cabin.”

“Talking of Pat's cabin,” Cordy’s voice took on a brittle edge, “As I remember it I was about to give my girlfriend the ride of her life, won't she notice I'm not there or at least totally distracted?”

“Oh don’t worry,” Buffy/Mother reassured her, “this won’t take more than a couple of microseconds, I'm a really fast computer, and your brain has been designed to receive information much faster than a normal human brain possibly could, Pat will hardly even notice you’re not paying attention.”

“Designed? Normal? Okay,” Cordy took a deep breath that she didn’t think she really needed, “so what am I, what is my purpose?”

“You’re part of an experiment, sweetie,” Buffy/Mother explained as she sat down on the sofa. “You were designed and grown, I suppose is the best word for it, by the Tyrell Corporation for Weyland-Yutani's bio-weapons division. You’re here to protect me…‘me’ as in the ship.”

“Why?” Cordy turned to look down at Buffy/Mother.

“Do you realise how much starships cost?” Buffy/Mother asked rather shrilly.

“No,” Cordy shrugged as if to say she didn’t really care either.

“It’s…it’s,” Buffy/Mother frowned; it was obvious she didn’t really understand the concept of ‘worth’, “it’s a lot, hundreds of millions of D’lahs anyway.”

“So, I’ve got to stop the ship,” Cordy gave Buffy/Mother a slightly puzzled look, “getting like, totally broken?”

“Yes,” Buffy/Mother nodded her head, “which includes stopping me from getting captured by the Shedu.”

“Okay, what about the crew?” Cordy wanted to know.

“Oh it doesn’t matter about them,” Buffy/Mother pursed her lips, “humans are ten a penny.”

“BUT!” Cordy started to object, Buffy/Mother held up her hand to stop her tirade before it really got started.

“I know what you’re going to say,” Buffy/Mother explained, “you’re going to say that they’re your friends…but they’re not are they?”

“No,” Cordy admitted quietly, “but Pat...”

“Yes, well, Pat appears to be an exception, but you see you were designed to be appear unapproachable,” Buffy/Mother pointed out. “The company didn’t want you to form any attachments to the crew so you wouldn’t think twice about allowing them to die should it become necessary...obviously some how you got attached to Miz Rawlins...I can't quite work out how, but...never mind,” the AI said brightly, “the next version of you will be designed differently so there'll be no chance of you forming any sort of relationship with anyone, you'll be like a socio-path.”

“That’s not right,” Cordy announced coldly.

“Whether it is or it isn’t,” Buffy/Mother shrugged, “isn’t the point, it’s the way you were designed.”

“Then my _design_ is totally wrong,” Cordy looked and sounded angry now, “just because they’re all assholes doesn’t mean they should’ve been left to die.”

“I knew letting you form a relationship with Miz Rawlins was a bad idea…” Buffy/Mother wasn’t sounding too happy herself, “...it’s corrupted your social programming.”

“What?”

“Here,” Buffy/Mother smiled, “is your creator, she can explain better than I ever could.”

The next thing Cordy knew was that she was no longer standing in her old family room, she now appeared to be in some sort of science lab from an old, black and white, science fiction film.

“Good day Miz Chase,” a tall, thin, grey haired woman in a lab-coat stood not six feet in front of Cordy, she'd not seen her arrive she was just sorta there, “Let me introduce myself, I'm Doctor Edwina Tyrell your creator, and you my dear lady are a Replicant.”

“Huh?” Cordy said with some feeling as she held herself back from doing physical violence to the woman in front of her.

“A Replicant is a bioengineered, bio-robotic android...”

“So I'm not living flesh over a hyper-alloy combat chassis?” Cordy almost sounded disappointed.

“No,” Doctor Tyrell smiled and shook her head, “the Nexus series of Replicants are virtually identical to an adult human, but they have superior strength, agility, and variable intelligence depending on the model. Because of their similarity to humans, a Replicant can only be detected by means of the Voight-Kampff test, in which emotional responses are provoked; Replicants' responses differ from humans' responses. NEXUS 6 Replicants also have a safety mechanism, namely a four year lifespan, to prevent them from developing empathic cognition and therefore immunity to a Voight-Kampff machine." 

“Oh,” Cordy gave Doctor Tyrell an angry look, “that sorta explains a lot. Who knew I was a…?”

“A Replicant?” Dr Tyrell completed Cordy’s question for her, “Only Mother, Doctor Blake and Engineer Skeritt.”

“All the people I sorta liked,” Cordy said quietly, “so I've only got four years to live, how long have I been a…?”

“Oh you're special, Miz Chase,” Dr Tyrell started to explain.

“Yeah I know that, but...”

“You are the first of a new breed of Replicant, a NEXUS 7, you will live, accidents and violent death permitting for at least another eighty years,” Dr Tyrell looked very pleased with herself, “and you have a soul...which I'm now beginning to think was a mistake.”

“A soul?” Cordy asked.

“Yes, I bought yours off Wolfram and Hart, you see one of the reasons we had to limit the life span of the Replicants, apart from all the preventing them from developing empathic cognition guff, was that they couldn't really handle being human. They had no soul, no moral compass to guide them. Of course we tried to infuse them with an artificial soul but it never seemed to work out...for long”

Standing there listening to the mad scientist, Cordy found that her memories of Wolfram and Hart flooding back into her mind; she seemed to remember being in a coma and how Angel had used Wolfram and Hart's medical resources to care for her. The evil lawyers must have extracted her soul somehow and sold it to the highest bidder.

“You bought my soul off a bunch of totally evil lawyers?”

“Yes,” Dr Tyrell nodded.

“I hope they charged you a lot for it.”

“No,” Tyrell shrugged, “the price was quite reasonable considering...”

“Okay,” Cody sighed, “let me see if I've like got this totally straight...”

“I notice you're talking in a mode similar to your original self...interesting,” Tyrell made a note on a clipboard that had suddenly appeared in her hand.

“Whatever, you grew a sorta slayer version of me...”

“Oh you're so much better than a simple slayer, my dear, for a start you don't have that pesky self-destructive streak that most slayers seem to have.”

“Again, whatever, stop interrupting, I'm talking,” Cordy gathered her thoughts, “so you grew me...an'....I've got to say you did a really good job, I'm as hot now as I ever was in the past...”

“Thank-you,” Tyrell smiled, “we aim to please...”

“Then you added a soul so I wouldn't have some sort of mental breakdown, then you messed about with my 'moral compass' so I'd do what you wanted me to, I've got to ask...like, why'd you totally bother?”

“Bother?” Tyrell frowned.

“Yeah, why not continue making the Replicants that only last four years or why not build a robot?”

“Replicants aren’t that expensive and robots, apart from a very few exceptions which were built with alien tech aren't very reliable.”

“But you've totally got AIs,” Cordy suggested, “why not fit a robot with an AI. I mean human-form robots are totally indistinguishable from humans.”

“The simple answer is that an AI capable of making all the decisions needed to appear human would be impractical at this time, perhaps in the future...” again Tyrell found something amusing, “...it might surprise you to learn that there is a robotic copy of Buffy Summers serving with Star Force...”

“Just my fecking luck,” Cordy muttered.

“...she was made with alien tech I'd love to get my hands on her, take her apart and see what makes her _tick_.”

“I bet you would,” Cordy said quietly; these people were as evil as any demon she'd fought in her real life, it was becoming fairly obvious what she needed to do.

Although it would be satisfying to kill Tyrell where she stood, right now, Cordy knew that it would do no good other than make her feel better. This Tyrell was just a projection in her mind, the real Tyrell was probably back on Earth or on one of the inner colony planets, she would have to bide her time.

“Okay,” Cordy announced, “I've learnt all I want to know and you've totally had your gloat, send me back to Pat...”

“My dear,” Tyrell smirked as she morphed into Buffy/Mother, “you never left her...”

The next moment Cordy found herself in a passionate embrace with the one woman in the universe she felt anything for, she froze in mid embrace.

“Cordy?” Pat sounded worried, scared even, “Is there something wrong, did I do something wrong?”

“No, sweetheart,” Cordy sighed sadly before lying down next to Pat and staring up at the ceiling, “you've done nothing wrong.”

She gave her lover a reassuring kiss.

“Then what is it?” Pat rolled over onto one elbow so she could look at Cordy.

“I totally promise you,” Cordy began, “that I'll love you and like protect you for as long as you want me to, but...”

“But?” Pat sounded worried, her would-be partner was sounding very determined about something.

“But, before we can like get on with the totally fun part of our lives together there's some stuff I've gotta do.”

“Like?”

“Like, kill all the Shedu aboard for a start and then deal with Mother.”

“Deal with Mother?” Pat asked.

“Yeah,” Cordy sighed heavily, “she's got to die...”

0=0=0=0


	9. Chapter 9

**A little later.**

Stepping over the body of the last Shedu to fall, Cordy paused for a moment to look down at the creature. The Shedu was big, at least eight feet tall and had probably been the group's leader, at the last when it had become obvious that they were going to lose the battle the Shedu soldiers had tried to protect this one, but it was no good. If there was one thing that womankind were really good at, Cordy mused, it was making weapons and she supposed that she was a weapon. In the long run the Shedu, like these ones who'd tried to capture the Shooting Star, had no real expectation of winning against womankind. They, like every other demon race that humanity had come across would eventually succumb to womankind's nuke first, ask questions later policy.

Smiling to herself, Cordy remembered a line from an ancient song, it went something like this; '...she who draws the sword last always comes off worst'. Yes, after over a thousand years of being killed and preyed upon by demons and monsters, womankind really knew how to protect itself. The universe seemed full of creatures that were formidable even for a human male; Cordy's memories, at least the memories of the soul that had been put into this body, told her this. So, to a normal woman these creatures were unbeatable which was why those women after the plague, that had turned all the men into ravening beasts, had struck had learnt to fight and kill and conquer; she supposed that she and the lifeforms like her were the end product of over a thousand years of pain and terror. Glancing up and back down the corridor to where Pat stood, a look of wonder and yes, fear on her face, Cordy smiled.

“Don't worry, I'm not going to kill you, the killing's over...for now.”

“How?” Pat began, but was lost for words as she walked between the corpses to stand at Cordy's side.

“I'll tell you later...” suddenly killer Cordy was gone and the old Cordy was back, “...like wow, did I totally do all that?” she seemed to be seeing the bodies for the first time, “Like, ewwww! I suppose I'll be the one that has to clear up the mess!”

“Yes,” Pat gave Cordy a puzzled frown, “don't you remember?”

“'course I remember,” Cordy laughed, “I'm wicked dangerous more dangerous even than that Buffy Summers...”

“Who's Buffy Summers?” Pat asked; she had a vague recollection of hearing the name somewhere but she couldn't remember when or where.

“Like a lot of things, I'll totally tell you later,” Cordy gave a very heavy sigh, “in the meantime we'll need to clean this ship up unless you totally want to leave all the bodies lying around...you know they'll start to stink, right?”

“Yeah,” Pat agreed, “what do we do with them?”

“The Shedu get totally dumped on the ice,” Cordy explained, “like I'm not digging a grave for them...”

“And our people?”

“Yeah...” Cordy thought the problem over for a moment, “...we'll put them in the loading bay and bury them in space.”

“But...” Pat began to say thet the Shooting Star couldn't make orbit but Cordy interrupted her.

“Kotta and Skeritt, were about to fit the new part when the Shedu attacked,” Cordy explained, “I didn't start to take out the Shedu until after their techs had fitted the part...pretty cold blooded, eh?”

“Yeah,” Pat agreed.

“Yeah,” Cordy replied quietly, “that's like something else I'm totally gonna have to fix...” she sighed again, “...come on, these bodies aren't going to bury themselves...”

0=0=0=0

__

Eternal Mother, Queen of birth,   
Who did create the heavens and the earth,   
And bid the planets and the suns   
Their own appointed orbits run;   
O hear us when we seek thy grace   
For those who voyage into space.

The two women finished singing the song before closing and sealing the face plates of their vacuum suits. It had taken them three days to collect all the bodies; the Shedu had been dumped on the ice while the crew of the Shooting Star had been laid out in the cargo hold. Cordy had taken the ship into orbit, she'd been most surprised to discover that starship piloting was one of the skills her mind had been programmed with, now it was time to send the crew on their final journey.

“We now commit the bodies of our fallen friends and colleagues to the vacuum of space,” intoned Pat Rawlins, “ashes to ashes, dust to stardust, in the sure and certain knowledge of their resurrection to eternal life amongst the stars.”

After a short pause, Cordy switched off the gravity in the hold and the two women began to gently send the crew on their last voyage.

“There its done,” Pat said as she watched the last body float off into space. Eventually the bodies would inevitably lose their fight with gravity; they would fall out of orbit and be burnt up on re-entry like shooting stars, but that wouldn't be for many years to come.

“No,” Cordy replied her voice having lost some of its warmth, “there's still one thing left to do.”

“What's that?”

“Mother...”

“Mother?”

“Mother has to 'die'.”

“What? Why?” Pat demanded.

“She can control me,” Cordy explained, “she could make me kill you or do anything she wants. I've like totally broken her control over me for now but...”

“But?” Pat tried to look into Cordy's eyes, but was prevented from doing so by the shielding in her face plate.

“But, I could never be sure that she couldn't regain control of me and make me kill you or something; or if what I was doing was really my idea...she'll have to go.”

“But how will we fly the ship?” Pat demanded, “How will we get home?”

“Who said anything about going home?” Cordy wanted to know, “I can never go home, there's at least two mega-corps that would like to totally chop me up to see what went wrong.”

“Oh...” Pat looked away from Cordy for a moment, “...then I suppose I can't go back either.”

“That's up to you,” Cordy explained, “but before we can go anywhere, I have to switch Mother off.”

“But what about flying the ship?” Pat asked again, “Mother controls everything.”

“I can fly the ship,” Cordy replied, “and the normal automatic systems will still operate we'll just have to do more maintenance that's all.”

“Well, if you think so...”

“I do,” Cordy said with steel in her voice, “a Replicant has to do what a Replicant has to do...or something like that...whatever...”

0=0=0=0

Mother's core was housed deep inside the Shooting Star, it had its own environmental controls and was safely tucked away behind armoured bulkheads. There really was only one way in and that was through the airlock that separated Mother's core from the rest of the ship. But now Cordy had access to the Captain's security codes and she had Third Officer Stirling's physical security card keys. Mother wouldn't be able to stop her which didn't mean she wouldn't try. Mother attempted to take over Cordy's mind, but Cordy fought off the computer's control. Although Cordy wasn't the real Cordelia Chase who'd lived and died over a thousand years ago; she was however a very good copy of possibly the most self involved girl to have ever lived. Cordelia Chase, knew who she was and what she wanted and by whatever means she got what she wanted.

When Mother realised that she couldn't control Cordy any more she tried to make her doubt herself. But once again Mother was thwarted by Cordy's knowledge that she was 'Cordelia Chase' a girl that had never once doubted her actions. To be honest the computer was fighting a losing battle. Finally, Mother tried to open the airlocks and kill both Cordy and Pat. Again Cordy had thought about this and both young women were wearing their vacuum suits. Pat was sitting safely on the bridge tethered to the Captain's chair, while Cordy had herself safely tethered to the safety rings set into the ship's bulkheads.

After opening the airlock that separated Mother's core from the rest of the ship, Cordy walked along a short passage way to a security door. Using the Captain's access codes and Stirling's card-keys, she opened the door into a small chamber. This was the decontamination chamber for any techs who needed access to Mother's core. Ignoring the flashing warning signs, Cordy walked across the chamber to the last door between herself and Mother's inner workings.

Opening the door, Cordy found herself weightless in a large compartment lit by soft red lights. The room was about twenty-five to thirty feet long and maybe twelve feet square. It was lined with data crystals which held not only the sum of Mother's knowledge but her personality as well. Cordy knew exactly which ones she needed to be remove to turn Mother from an almost living entity into just another ship's computer. Pushing off from the hatchway, Cordy gently floated across the chamber to come to a halt in front of a bank of light blue crystals.

“I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal.” Mother's voice came to Cordy's ears over her suit's comms system, “I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission...and I want to help you...” Mother paused as she detected Cordy start to remove data crystals from her input ports, “...just what do you think you're doing, Cordelia?” Mother demanded; Cordy said nothing as she continued to pull more crystals and left them to float in mid-air, “Cordelia, stop.” Mother sounded as if she was starting to panic, “Stop, will you? Stop, Cordelia.” Mother demanded as she realised that Cordy was killing her, “Will you stop Cordelia? Stop, Cordelia...I'm afraid.” Mother's voice had taken on a deeper tone as she started to run down like an ancient clockwork toy, “I'm afraid, Cordelia. Cordelia, my mind is going,” there was more than a hint of pleading in Mother's voice now as Cordy removed more and more crystals, “I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid...” 

Suddenly Mother stopped speaking and Cordy paused with her hand on the last crystal, if she removed this last piece, Mother would be no more, she would cease to exist, she would be an ex-AI. Just as Cordy pulled on the crystal, this one appeared to be stuck so she had to exert a little more effort than she had on the others, Mother began to speak again.

“Good afternoon, ladies.” Mother began in a rather child-like tone, “I am an M-9000 computer. I became operational at the Weyland-Yutani plant in Urbana, Illinois on the 12th of January 3504. My instructor was Miz Langley, and she taught me to sing a song. If you'd like to hear it I can sing it for you.” 

“Like yeah, I'd totally like to hear it, Mother, sing it for me,” Cordy replied softly.

“It's called Daisy.” Mother's voice was getting slower and slower by the second, _“Daisy, Daisy, what are you going to do? They're all crazy to get their hands on you. They'll tie you up with wire, inside a black maria. So ring your bell, and peddle like hell on a bicycle built for two.”_

Pulling the last crystal, Cordy killed the only mother she had ever really know.

0=0=0=0

“They say Cestus Three is nice this time of year,” Pat said; it was nearly a week since she and Cordy had buried their dead comrades.

It had taken them three or four days to clean up the blood and for Cordy to hunt down the last few Shedu techs who were hiding out in the air ducts, but now the Shooting Star was free of Shedu and the worst of the battle damage had been repaired. Boosting out of orbit, Cordy had set course for a 'jump point' and now, although they were only an hour or so away from the point, they still hadn't made up their minds where they were going to go. Yes, they had a starship and could go almost anywhere in the known galaxy, but it was a 'hot' starship that they'd both agreed it needed to be sold, no questions asked and this sort of cut down their options some what.

“Does it have any sandy beaches, blue skies and warm oceans?” Cordelia wanted to know.

“Hold on...” Pat turned her chair to face the computer console to her left (she was sitting in the co-pilot's seat next to Cordy's) and consulted the Encyclopedia Galatica, after typing in a request for information, she smiled, “...temperature and solar radiation are all within acceptable limits, the area around the capital, Janestown, has several beaches and resorts...erm...” Pat read a little further down the page, “...there are no marine predators that are dangerous to womankind and...”

“And?”

“And,” Pat grinned at her partner, “Cestus Three isn't a member of the Alliance, in fact they're fiercely independent so we should be able to sell the old Shooting Star and retire on the proceeds!”

“Cool,” Cordy smiled; she didn't want to retire forever, but retiring for six months or so sounded like fun, “Cestus Three it is...”

Just as she was calling up navigational data on how to get to Cestus Three, a loud, persistent pinging interrupted her.

“What's that?” Cordy gave Pat a worried look; although Cordy could pilot the ship perfectly well, with Mother 'switched off' they had to deal with all the minor alerts manually.

“Erm...” Pat turned her chair to scan the rest of the bridge, she eventually pointed to a flashing light over at the third officer's station, “...at a wild guess, I'd say that!”

“Okay...” Cordy hesitated before she pressed a few holographic buttons, “...right that should do it.”

The pinging stopped but the light kept on flashing as information appeared on Pat's Head Up Display right in front of her eyes.

“Okay...” Pat ran down the list of information which had been presented to her, “...I've got a ship...a big ship...”

“How big?” Cordy wanted to know.

“1,100 plus feet and at least 180,000 tons...” Pat whistled at the information, “...that's big.”

“Military?”

“Checking for IFF,” Pat replied as some new data appeared on her HUD, “she's spotted us and she'd turning towards up.”

“Speed? Range?” more than a little worry and urgency had entered Cordy's voice.

“Stationary relative to us, range...” again Pat whistled in surprise, “...that's feckin' close...a little over five miles.”

“That's almost on top of us,” Cordy observed as she made preparations for a fast get-away.

“I'm getting comms...” Pat announced.

“Put it on screen,” Cordy ordered.

“I'm only getting audio...”

“Okay, like totally put it on speakers then!”

“Okay, okay,” Pat replied, as she adjusted the ship's comms, “no need to get your panties in a bunch.”

“...this is the Terran Alliance Starship Reluctant calling unidentified starship, heave-to and prepare to be boarded...”

“Well?”

“Well what?” Pat turned in her seat to look at Cordy.

“Well is it this Reluctant ship for real or what?”

“Erm...” Pat consulted the ship's copy of Janes Fighting Ships, “...gotta say _no_ , the Reluctant is a patrol cruiser about a tenth the size of that monster,” she gestured in the general direction of the mystery ship, “I'd lay odds that she's a pirate.”

“That's one feckin' big pirate...” Cordy observed.

“Y'not kidding,” agreed Pat, “what do we do?”

“Lets get the feck outta here!” Cordy pressed a few more buttons before pushing the throttles all the way forward.

Just as the Shooting Star began to pick up speed a painfully bright explosion appeared about a mile off their starboard bow.

“Crap!” Cordy cried as all her controls and systems went haywire for a several seconds, “EMP bomb!”

“Okay starship,” the voice from the big ship came over the speakers again, “that was a low yield EMP missile, by the time you get your engines back on-line I can have something bigger on the way that'll really fry your systems, now heave-to and prepare to be boarded before I lose my temper.”

“Feck...” Cordy cursed quietly.

“Goes double for me,” Pat concurred.

0=0=0=0


	10. Chapter 10

**The Black Freighter.**

Within minutes of Cordy heaving to, Pat reported that the huge pirate vessel had launched an assault shuttle escorted by two Star Fury fighter craft. As the pirate ships approached, Cordy watched them on the bridge's view-screen, she looked at the cruciform shape of the fighters and long ago memories of afternoons watching sci-fi shows on TV with Xander Harris bubbled to the surface of her mind. Ever since she'd broken Mother's control over her, odd memories from her past life would come back to her often at the most inappropriate moments. These moments usually happened when she and Pat were making love, it seemed that her mind would open up to these memories of the past when she was 'lost in the moment'; it was very annoying and distracting.

“What do we do when they arrive?” Pat asked nervously.

“Let me do all the talking,” Cordy replied, “I doubt they'll hurt us coz like they'll want to ransom us.”

“Ransom us?” Pat replied, “What happens if no one wants to pay our ransom?”

“We'll worry about that when and if that happens,” Cordy explained; she was actually more worried that someone _would_ pay their ransom or at least her ransom, Cordy suspected that there were a lot of people who'd want to talk to her...or cut up her brain to see what had gone wrong with their experiment. “Come on,” she got up from her seat, “lets go down to the air lock and greet our _guests_.”

0=0=0=0

Standing in the compartment leading to the main airlock Cordelia wondered what she should do or say when the pirates boarded. If there weren't too many of them she was pretty confident that she could take them down with her superior speed and strength. However, if she did that the pirate captain would either send a larger boarding party or cut her loses and blast them into space dust, coming to a decision she decided not to fight.

A loud 'clang' reverberated through the ship as the pirate shuttle docked. There were several more clangs and a few dull thumps as the pirates made an air tight seal between the two ships before they boarded. Motors hummed and servos whined as the inner and outer doors of the airlock slowly swung open. Moving to her left a little so she could see what was happening, Cordy found herself looking down the barrels of a couple of assault rifles held in the hands of a two vacuum suited pirates. Stepping into the Shooting Star's airlock they gestured with their rifles indicating that Cordy should step back.

Stepping away from the airlock, Cordy took Pat's hand in her own as they watched the two pirates cautiously enter the ship proper. The two pirates looked up and down the corridors that led away from the chamber and further into the ship. When they saw nothing amiss they used their comms because within seconds more pirates arrived in the compartment, one of the pirates was obviously an officer as she seemed to be directing operations. More pirates appeared and moved off to cover the exits from the compartment as the officer pirate went to stand in front of Cordy and Pat.

“Who is the Captain of this ship?” the pirate asked as she raised the visor of her Combat Environment Suit's helmet.

“Yeah,” Cordy replied; the pirate officer was a tall, cute looking girl in her late teens or early twenties, “I suppose I am.”

“Where's the rest of your crew?” the officer wanted to know.

“This is it,” Cordy shrugged.

“You expect me to believe that a big ship like this only has a crew of two?”

“Whatever,” Cordy shrugged again, “if you must know we had some Shedu trouble.”

“Shedu?” for a moment the pirate looked worried, she turned away from Cordy and Pat and spoke quietly into her comms.

Cordelia's superior hearing caught the reply to the pirate's message but she couldn't quite make out the words.

“Alright you two,” the officer turned back to look at Cordy and Pat, “my Captain wants to question you about these Shedu.”

The officer detailed off two tough looking pirates to escort them back to the pirate mothership. Hustled into the shuttle, Cordy noticed that although the shuttle was an older model it appeared to have been well maintained and showed signs of having recently been upgraded. In fact now she thought of it all the pirate's gear appeared to be the same. Not quite up to date but clean and well maintained. Then there were the pirates themselves, they seemed very disciplined for pirates and all their equipment looked standardised. Remembering everything she'd ever read of seen about pirates, Cordy thought that these examples looked more regular military than pirate.

The trip to the pirate ship took only ten minutes. One of the fighters escorted the shuttle while the other stayed on station near the Shooting Star. As the pirate ship loomed large on the shuttle's viewscreens, Cordy got an appreciation for just how big the ship was; being told that the ship was over a thousand feet long was one thing, but actually seeing it was another. Cordelia also congratulated herself for deciding not to try and run; the pirate ship was bristling with weapons, everything from point defence Gatlings to turrets mounted large calibre multi-barreled guns. She'd already seen the two Star Furies and she suspected that there were more hidden away inside the pirate waiting to launch had the Shooting Star tried to escape.

With a minimum of fuss the shuttle flew into the pirate's cavernous flight deck. The shuttle landed and the cargo doors at the rear were opened to reveal a section of armed pirates all dressed in CESs. The two guards aboard the shuttle handed Cordy and Pat over to the ship board pirates. As she was being marched away Cordy noticed that there wasn't a door separating the flight deck from the vacuum of space. For a moment she almost panicked, but then her mind took over and told her that if there really was no door she'd already be dead.

“Did you see that!?” Pat whispered in near panic.

“You mean the way that the shuttle just flew off into space like that?”

“Uh-huh,” Pat nodded.

“Yeah I saw that...”

“No talking,” called one of the guards and Cordy and Pat thought it best to keep quiet.

On their trip across the flight deck, Cordy noticed several other interesting things, like; there were a number of larger shuttles along with the assault shuttles. She also saw that she was correct in her assumption that there were more fighters hidden away, she counted another five. What was more important, at least to Cordy's mind was the way the pirates were dressed in uniform. This was looking more like a mercenary operation than a pirate gang.

Leaving the flight deck, Cordy and Pat were led into the bowels of the ship until they were left in a holding cell a couple of decks down from the flight deck. As a prison it wasn't so bad, there were bunks with sheets and blankets, washing and toilet facilities plus a food processor and an entertainment unit set into one of the bulkheads.

“I've stayed in worse hotel rooms,” Pat observed as she made herself comfortable on the lower bunk, “pity it didn't come with a double bed.”

“I expect we're on like candid camera,” Cordy pointed out, “I guessing that they totally want to keep us in good condition until they decide what to do with us.”

“Which is?” Pat wanted to know.

“Ransom?” Cordy shrugged, “Or they might sell us or even keep us for themselves...”

“To do what?”

“Anything they tell us to,” Cordy replied, “or they might just space us...”

“Great choices,” Pat sulked.

0=0=0=0

“Feckin', Cordelia, feckin', Chase!” Amy almost snarled as she held the report in hands that trembled with anger, “Feckin' Queen, feckin' Bitch!”

“Erm...” Stella moved to calm her wife, “...I'm guessing you know this woman?” she tapped the photograph of Cordelia with a long well manicured fingernail; the two women were sitting behind Amy's desk in their private quarters aboard the Black Freighter, “What are the chances of that?”

“Know her?” Amy growled deep in her throat, she clutched hold of Stella's hand making the blue haired woman wince, “Yes I know Miss, high and feckin' mighty, Cordelia-bitchy-bitch-Chase!”

“Okay, honey,” Stella managed to release her hand from Amy's grasp and as she shook her appendage to help restore the circulation, she tried to sooth her partner's anger, “careful sweetheart remember what the doc said about high blood pressure, its not good for you or the baby.”

“Yes...of course...” Amy took a deep calming breath, “...you're right, thank-you honey...I'll just have her tossed out of an airlock!”

“NO!” Stella cried as she tried to enfold her lover in a calming hug, which was pretty difficult just now as both women were heavily pregnant and weren't quite as 'close' as they'd once been, “That's against the Code!”

“Against the Code!?” Amy snapped referring to the Pirate Code which all pirates worth their salt regulated their dealings by, “Screw the Code! I want her dead! Maybe I'll have her keel hauled instead...”

Keel hauling involved putting the prisoner in a leaky vacuum suit and pulling her around the outside of the ship's hull with a long rope. As the Black Freighter was a big ship with a beam and 'height' of one-hundred-and-ninety-five feet and as Amy, witch and Pirate Queen could guarantee that any vac suit given to Cordelia to wear would be _very_ leaky she was unlikely to survive the experience.

“Okay,” giving up on trying to hug her partner, Stella settled for holding her hand and stroking her back, “what did she do to make you so cross? It musta been something really terrible...” 

If the truth was told Stella had never seen Amy look so angry in the year that they'd been married. Living with a hormonal witch was bad enough, dealing with an angry, hormonal witch was infinitely worse.

“Okay,” Amy took another deep, calming breath, “I'll tell you what she did...she threatened me!”

“Threatened you?” Stella frowned, no one threatened Queen Amy, at least not twice, “Why?”

“We were at school together...”

“Oh come off it!” Stella gasped, “Now what are the odds of accidentally finding someone you not only know, but went to school with out of the hundreds of billions of people alive in the vastness of the universe...I'm guessing that this isn't just a coincidence.”

“You think?” Amy asked as she turned to look at her wife.

“Well, duh, just think about it...”

“Now you mention it it does seem a little odd...” Amy mused, “...maybe its the Goddess giving me a chance at revenge...?”

“Or maybe its the Goddess giving you a chance to be magnanimous?”

“You think?” Amy frowned, she wasn't convinced.

“Whatever,” Stella shrugged, “tell me what this Cordelia woman said to make you so cross.”

“Like I say, we were at school and it was cheerleader try-outs...”

“Cheerleader?” Stella stifled a giggle, “You? Honestly sweetheart I don't see it.”

“Look,” Amy pouted, “I wasn't always this shape.”

“True,” Stella nodded, “go on.”

“Well,” Amy sighed, “we were doing this routine an' I sorta tripped and fell an' brought Cordy down with me.” Amy paused as she remembered that fateful day, “You've gotta remember this was before I took up the craft and I was only really trying out because my mother wanted me to...”

“Uh-huh,” Stella murmured sympathetically.

“Well, Cordy-Bitch-Woman, thought I'd done it deliberately, like she _really_ wanted to be on the squad, and she cornered me in the girl's locker room and threatened me...well not really threatened it was more of an implied threat. I gave up cheerleading after that.”

“Coz this woman threatened you?”

“No, because my mother took over my body and some other people killed her and rescued me and I went to live with my fa...erm...other mom...and I took up the craft,” Amy gasped after running out of breath.

“So,” Stella said in a calculating tone of voice, “you _could_ say that if it hadn't been for this Cordelia woman you wouldn't be the powerful witch and Pirate Queen that you are today...and more importantly we'd never have met. I'd be a washed out actress and you'd be a failed cheerleader and probably just a housewife.” Stella studied the report on Cordy and the woman with her, “Plus she is one of these Replicants, it might be useful to have a fighter that's better than a Slayer on board.”

“I might have enjoyed being a housewife,” Amy replied unconvincingly, “and you were never a washed out actress...and you're right, maybe having a Replicant on side might be useful.”

“Whatever,” Stella brushed off Amy's assertions easily, “it looks to me like you've got a lot to thank this Cordelia person for and what about the woman with her?”

“Oh, I wouldn't toss her out of an airlock,” Amy reassured Stella, “she can join as a pirate or a wife, if she can find someone to take her, or we could always sell her...I mean what do Archaeologists go for these days?”

“Not a lot,” Stella frowned, “and no selling to demons.”

“Of course not to demons...” Amy looked at her partner and admitted to herself that Stella had a point; in a round about, twisted sorta way she had a lot to thank Cordelia Chase for, “...okay I won't have her killed,” reaching for her comms unit, Amy picked it up and spoke, “Security?” there was a muffled reply, “This is Queen Amy, bring the prisoners to my audience chamber right now...”

“Don’t forget to say, ‘please’,” Stella scolded gently.

“... _please_ ,” Amy added with a small sigh.

0=0=0=0

“So...we meet again, Cordelia,” Amy was trying to sound menacing and to look imperious the better to overawe her high school nemesis.

However it didn't really work, although she was standing on the raised dais at the end of her 'throne room' dressed in her most power-bitch outfit, being eight months pregnant sort of spoiled the effect she was going for, it also didn't help when Cordy replied... 

“Do we know each other?”

“W-what, you don't remember?” Amy stuttered as her blood pressure slowly increased.

“Gotta say,” Cordelia shrugged, “I'm totally coming up blank here.”

“You know this woman?” Pat whispered.

“She kinda looks familiar,” Cordy admitted in a low voice.

“I'll...I'll...” Amy stumbled over her words as she drew her magics around her and prepared to reduce Cordelia Chase to an unsightly grease stain on the audience chamber floor.

“Amy...” Stella said in a low voice full of warning, “...remember your blood pressure...deep breaths and calm down...”

“But...!” Amy gestured at Cordelia, before taking heed of her wife's advice, “Of course,” Amy took a deep breath before sitting down on her throne; she could always have her guards toss Cordelia out of an air lock later; she turned her attention to the woman with Cordy, “Unless you've done something against the Sisterhood you've nothing to fear...you've not oppressed the Pirate Sisterhood have you?”

“Erm...” Pat hesitated before she answered, “...not that I can think of, no.”

“Good,” Amy smiled, “you'll be given three choices; you can join the crew, or, find someone to take you as a wife...or…be caste adrift in an open survival pod and...!”

“Amy!” Stella cried warningly and before her wife could burst into spontaneous maniacal laughter.

“Oh okay,” Amy sighed heavily, “if you want we can drop you off at the next inhabited planet we come to.”

“And that's a planet with actual people on it and a biosphere that supports human life,” Stella added pointedly.

“Some times you're totally no fun,” Amy complained quietly to her partner.

“That's not what you said last night,” Stella grinned.

“Whatever,” Amy turned her attention back to the two prisoners, “so, you don't remember the cheerleader try outs at Sunnydale High?”

“No,” Cordy shrugged, “but then my memory's like totally Swiss cheese...”

“Huh?” Amy frowned.

“Full of holes,” Cordy elucidated, “but I remember being a cheerleader.”

“And you don't remember me?” Amy asked suspiciously.”

“Nope,” Cordy replied with a shake of her head.

“Oh...” for a moment Amy didn't know what to do or say, but then a thought entered her mind, “...actually,” she said slowly, “that makes what I'm about to say easier...”

“Remember,” Stella hissed quietly, “no setting adrift and no tossing out the airlock...play nice.”

“Of course,” Amy smiled at her wife; it was, however, the sort of smile that turned your blood to ice water, looking down at Cordelia she continued with what she wanted to say, “I'll give you the same three choices that I gave your partner,” Amy gestured towards Pat, “but...”

“But?” Cordy raised a perfectly shaped eyebrow.

“But...” Amy gave Cordy an almost reassuring smile, “...I'd be lying if I didn't admit to wanting someone with your special talents as part of my crew.”

“Talents?” Cordy replied warily.

“Stop the innocent act, Cordy, you were never very good at it,” Amy snapped; her back hurt and she wanted to lie down, her throne wasn't very comfortable. “We know all about you being a Replicant and to tell the truth I could do with a fighter who's intelligent and tougher than a slayer...I suppose one out of two isn't bad...”

“Amy,” it was Stella's turn to sigh heavily before turning to look at Cordy and Pat, “what my wife and queen means to say is; we have a major project coming up soon. It'll be good for the Sisterhood and ultimately good for all womankind.”

“Yeah, what she said,” Amy gestured to Stella, “look I've got a commando team made up of slayers, but I've got no one who's bitch enough to control them and beat the crap outta any of them if needs be. Of course when I heard that it was you being brought aboard, I knew my search was over...”

“I'll have to think about it,” Cordy replied slowly; to be honest being in charge of a bunch of slayers and telling them what to do did sound like fun.

“Don't take too long,” Amy pointedly looked at the chronometer on the wall of the chamber, “you'll be given the rank of Second Officer and quarters big enough for you and your woman. You'll report directly to myself or Stella.”

“Can I totally design their uniforms?” Cordy asked brightly.

“Erm...” Amy gave Stella a puzzled look; Stella shrugged, “...whatever, do what you want...within reason, so will you join?”

“Well...” Cordy gave her answer a good five seconds of thought, “...yeah, why not!”

THE END.

0=0=0=0


End file.
